WPP Scangroup has appointed Ms. Patricia Ithau as the new chief executive and executive director effective March 14, replacing founder and long-serving chief executive Bharat Thakrar who left last year over unspecified allegations of gross misconduct.
Mr. Thakrar resigned in March last year, a month after he had been suspended from the marketing services firm to pave way for investigations.
Mr. Thakrar, 69, was suspended alongside the chief finance officer Satyabrata Das, on February 18. He Thakrar was replaced temporarily by chief operating officer Alec Graham.
Ms. Ithau is currently the regional director at Seed, the Stanford Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies.
“Patricia is passionate about creating opportunities that improve people live,” WPP Scangroup chairman Mr. Richard Omwela said in an announcement in local dailies.
She joins the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed firm after the board closed an investigation against its former boss without finding incriminating evidence, raising questions about the reliability of the information it used to push out the company’s founder.
The announcement of the probe had sent jitters among the company’s shareholders, sending the stock down to record lows of Sh3.6.
Sources familiar with the matter said that Mr. Thakrar and representatives of the company’s majority shareholder, London-based WPP Plc, had fallen out over management and strategy, including capital allocation decisions.
Ms. Ithau has worked with consumer brands including Unilever, Diageo/East Africa Breweries Limited and French personal care company, LÓreal.
She previously served on the board of WPP Scangroup as non-executive director from 2017 to 2020.
She is a board member in companies such as Absa Bank Kenya, Trademark East Africa, Jambojet, British Chamber of Commerce and Industry, a trustee on the boards of Vodafone Foundation UK and M-Pesa Foundation.
She holds an MBA in Strategic Management from USIU –Africa, and a B Com from the University of Nairobi.
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