New CEO for Virgin Mobile SA

Johannesburg - Jonathan Marchbank has been named the new CEO of Virgin Mobile South Africa.

Marchbank most recently headed up the Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa Group’s activities in Asia‚ prior to which he served as the Chief Operating Officer for Virgin Mobile USA‚ a business with over five million mobile customers. Before that‚ he was the CEO of Virgin Mobile in Australia and Asia.

Prior to joining Virgin Mobile‚ Marchbank served as Managing Director of Telstra’s mobile business in Australia‚ having spent the previous 10 years as Managing Director at Nokia and Philips in Asia and Australia.

“As the first Virgin Mobile business in the Africa / Middle East region‚ the success of Virgin Mobile South Africa is key to the newly formed Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa Group. It is for this reason that we have elected to invest significant further funding into the South African business and have asked a CEO of Jonathan’s calibre to lead the company on an accelerated growth trajectory”‚ said Peter Langkilde‚ Chairperson‚ Virgin Mobile‚ Middle East and Africa.

“I will spend the remainder of the year leading the planning and execution of our new go-to-market strategy‚ a process that is already well underway and which will re-energise the Virgin Mobile business and brand in South Africa with a view to strongly accelerating growth over the next few years‚” said Marchbank.