Mteto Nyati has been group chief executive at Altron for nearly two years and during his short tenure, he’s had to contend with the positives and negatives of a 50-year legacy of the group’s previous leadership, the Venter family. However, unlike King Canute, it seems Nyati’s managing to turn the tide.

Officially, he celebrates two years’ service with Altron at the end of May, but Nyati admits to having had a secret five months prior to joining the group, where, as CEO of MTN South Africa, he’d spent time doing due diligence on the Altron Group as a possible acquisition target for the network operator. “I already had plans on day one of what we were going to do. Coming in, I had to check some of the assumptions we had made. This made things easier for me.”