09 april 2021
16:02
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Ecolo appoints political director Mohssin El Ghabri to Bpost’s board of directors. Three directors disappear from the heavily criticized body.
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A few weeks after Federal Minister of Public Enterprises Petra De Sutter (Groen) demanded the resignation of Jean-Paul Van Avermaet, CEO of Bpost, the government is shifting the first pawns on the board of directors. This is evident from the notice convening the general meeting of May 12, which the listed company published on Friday.
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The essence
- At Bpost, three out of four directors have to leave with an expiring mandate.
- The ruling party Ecolo sends political director Mohssin El Ghabri to the board of directors.
- The PS may soon choose a new chairman for Bpost.
- The opposition N-VA party denounces the appointment of interim chairman Ray Stewart, who lives in Florida.
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Mohssin El Ghabri becomes one of five state administrators, owning 51 percent of Bpost. El Ghabri is political director of Ecolo and was briefly alderman for the party in the Brussels municipality of Saint-Gilles. The political scientist has a strong ecological profile. He worked for many years at Etopia, a think tank closely related to Ecolo. On the board of directors, he replaces Bernadette Lambrechts (cdH), whose term of office has expired.
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Jos Donvil, the CEO of the Anderlecht football club, is the only one of the four directors with an expiring mandate to remain on board. Donvil, who sits for Open VLD, was a candidate to become Bpost CEO in 2019. He lost the fight to Van Avermaet. After his resignation, Donvil was asked to become interim CEO of Bpost, but he declined, Donvil said in several interviews recently. Bpost subsequently appointed legal director Dirk Tirez as temporary top executive.
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Florida
Bpost has in the meantime appointed independent director Ray Stewart as interim chairman. The opposition party N-VA is attacking this appointment. The former financial director of the listed telecom company Proximus lives in Florida, a stone’s throw from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort. “In a turbulent period, the chairman must be present every day to make contact with employees or to help in the search for a new CEO,” said MP Michael Freilich (N-VA). “Running the company from Florida isn’t serious, is it? You can’t do that, can you? Bpost is the country’s largest employer. ‘
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Running bpost from Florida isn’t serious, is it? You can’t do that, can you?
