AccessKenya Managing Director Jonathan Somen, who is also a founding member of the tech firm, will step down in the next three months.
His exit marks the end of an eventful 15 years at the helm of AccessKenya, which briefly listed at the NSE before being bought out by a South African group. “It is with great sadness that I announce to you that I will be standing down as group managing director of AccessKenya at the end of this financial year.
“This decision has been very hard to make but I feel that now is the right time for me to hand over the reins to someone new to drive the business into the future,” Mr Somen is quoted by Business Daily as saying in internal communication to AccessKenya staff.
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Dimension Data, the South African group that owns AccessKenya, has hired Richard Hechle as the new group managing director. Mr Somen will remain on the board as a non-executive director. Mr Hechle joins AccessKenya from Finlays Horticulture, where he was the managing director.
AccessKenya Group was founded in 1995 Communications Solutions Limited by brothers David and Jonathan Somen as an information and communications technology firm targeting corporate clients in Kenya.
The company changed its name to AccessKenya in 2000. In April 2007, AccessKenya went public through an initial public offering (IPO) at the NSE, becoming Kenya’s only publicly listed ICT company, in which it offered 80 million shares Kshh10 each.
In 2007, AccessKenya Group acquired OpenView Business Systems. In February 2009, the company again acquired Satori Solutions, a mid-sized virtual ISP, to help promote the sale of the group’s new SoHo service, which is focused on the small and home office market.
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