Standard Bank Namibia Holdings (SBN) Chief Executive Officer, Mercia Geises has been ranked among top CEOs running multi-million-dollar enterprises in Africa.
According to the 2022 African Definitive List of Women CEOs released this week by Africa.com, Geises was recognised alongside 73 other women leaders for their exemplary leadership during the past year.
While explaining how the list was arrived at, Africa.com Chairperson, Teresa Clarke, stated that the organisers of the annual list looked at the economic performance of the companies and also introduced other financial factors to increase the number of women in the 2022 list.
“In the first year, we used market capitalization of listed companies as the only financial metric by which to qualify companies for consideration. In 2022, we changed the qualification to be either large-scale market capitalization or large-scale revenue. By making revenue a screening mechanism, we brought in a larger group of companies from across the continent, thereby diversifying the geographic representation of the list significantly. In short, the list represents the women who run big business in Africa. All of the women run businesses with revenue of US$100 million or more,” she stated.
It was also revealed that the list was part of the organisers’ vision to celebrate women leaders on the continent as the world marked International Women’s Day.
Also on the list are the likes of Natascha Viljoen, CEO, Anglo American Platinum, South Africa, Bertina Engelbrecht, CEO, Clicks Group, South Africa, Jane Karuku, Group Managing Director & CEO, East African Breweries Ltd. Kenya among others.
In September last year, Geises and Nedbank Namibia Managing Director, Martha Murorua were named among the top 50 Most Reputable Bank CEOs in Africa by Reputation Poll International.
Geises joined the SBN in July 2016 as Head of Personal and Business Banking, responsible for the retail banking franchise, the largest division of the bank and was appointed to her current role in May 2021.
Mercia is an admitted attorney who started her corporate career in impact investing, setting up and running infrastructure funds with significant development impact in the country.
Prior to joining Standard Bank, Geises worked at Old Mutual for 12 years, rising to the position of Chief Executive Officer of Old Mutual Investment Group (Namibia), an investment manager with N$30bn in assets under management.
