Cell C, Cell C, play a number
Cell C’s new chief financial officer, Fabrizio Mambrini, is not your typical bean counter. When I arrive for my interview with him at the cellphone company’s Sandton headquarters, he’s wearing blue jeans and a bright pink shirt.
“I am much more of an operational guy than a finance guy,” the wild-haired Sicilian electrical engineer tells me, beaming from ear to ear.
Mambrini, who has a doctorate in robotics (specialising in control over electronic arm movement), says he joined Cell C mainly on the strength of CEO Jeffrey Hedberg. “Jeffrey’s personal character is one of the main things that made me excited about working here.”
Both men are flamboyant and both clearly enjoy life. Mambrini describes his big passion as music – rock, opera, jazz, blues. He plays the electric guitar and recently bought a snazzy Marshall amp, which he says he is putting to good use in his new Johannesburg home. “One thing I like about SA is the big houses, so I can play loud music without disturbing the neighbours.”
It also probably helps that he’s a bachelor and has no children.
When he’s not jamming on his guitar, he’s either sailing or snow-boarding, neither of which, he concedes, is easy to do in Gauteng. He says Jo’burg would be the perfect city if it were near an ocean.
For now, though, it is Cell C that will be consuming most of Mambrini’s attention. There’s no doubt that he and Hedberg, also a foreigner, have a hard slog ahead of them. Cell C is SA’s smallest network operator, with barely 10% of the mobile market. It faces intense competition – some of it unfair, Hedberg frequently likes to point out – from incumbents MTN and Vodacom.
But Mambrini says the operator now has the strategy to ensure it takes market share and revenue from its rivals. He says recent downgrades by ratings agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s do not accurately reflect what is happening at the company. “They made their decisions on our old business plans, not the realistic plan that Jeffrey has laid down,” he says.
Mambrini has enjoyed a long career in telecommunications. He worked for Telecom Italia for 16 years – he started in the fixed-line business before joining its mobile arm.
In 1994, he relocated from his native Italy to Greece, where Telecom Italia had been awarded one of two mobile licences. Mambrini was appointed chief financial officer, a position he held until 2000 when the business was sold to private equity investors.
When Telecom Italia won the licence to operate Turkey’s third mobile network, Mambrini made the move to Istanbul, again to head finance at the new company, known then as Aria. In 2004, Aria merged with fourth mobile licensee Aycell to create Avea. “The shareholders decided to retain this engineer as chief financial officer.”
Then, in 2006, Telecom Italia sold its stake in Avea to Oger Telecom-owned Turk Telecom. Mambrini was offered a job by Oger management, which he accepted. After 16 years at Telecom Italia, “it was time to try something else”. He was appointed director of international operations, with responsibility for providing support to Avea and Cell C, in which it indirectly holds a 75% stake.
In September, he was asked to relocate to SA to assist Hedberg at Cell C. He says he took the job because he is excited about the company’s prospects. He believes there are parallels that can be drawn between it and Avea. Despite the odds being heavily stacked against it, Avea has secured 20% of the market in Turkey.
Mambrini, who says he plans to stay in SA for the foreseeable future, believes Cell C’s strategy is already bearing fruit. If he’s right, he could soon be making music of the financial kind.
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