The board of Kenya Airways yesterday met and elected Michael Joseph, the former Safaricom chief executive, as chair hoping his international experience will help turnaround the troubled company.
Joseph took over from Dennis Awori who resigned ahead of release of Kenya Airways’ half-year performance this morning.
“Our first priority is to restructure the financing and once we have done that we can start thinking about a strategic investor but it is too early to talk about that at the moment,” Joseph said.
Mr Joseph, who is credited with growing Safaricom from a nondescript unit of a former State corporation to the region’s most profitable company, wants to improve the morale of staff who have in recent days been up in arms.
The 70-year-old acknowledged that the airline has a lot of ground to cover, but insisted that with the right interventions, the publicly listed company can be rescued.
“The board is studying the Deloitte audit report in order to make factual corrections and establish the truth. After that, we shall take the appropriate action,” Mr Joseph said in an interview.
Kenya Airways needs to extend debt repayments and make other changes to restructure its balance sheet, which would take priority over finding a strategic partner, the new chairman further told Reuters.
“Restoring KQ will not happen automatically. We have to look at areas like on-time performance, our debt, pricing and the destinations we fly to. KQ can be salvaged. It is a great airline with a new fleet.”
Kenya Airways is expected to announce half-year results for the period ended September 2016 on Thursday morning. The carrier has already said it expects to report a Sh7 billion reduction in after-tax loss to Sh5 billion and a growth in passenger numbers.