Partnerships key to unlocking corporate growth: Old Mutual CEO

PHILLIMON MHLANGA IN VICTORIA FALLS

Old Mutual Zimbabwe chief executive officer, Samuel Matsekete, says partnerships will be critical to driving  corporate growth  in Zimbabwe,  warning that companies which fail to embrace alliances risk being left behind.

He stressed that values, governance, and competence will determine which partnerships thrive and which collapse.

Speaking at the  on-going Chartered Governance and Accountancy Institute of Zimbabwe (CGAIZ) conference in  the resort city of Victoria Falls, Matsekete said too many partnerships falter because they are not built on shared ethics and coherent value systems.

“…underpinning the right ethics and ways of deciding and interacting is very important in partnerships. A lot of partnerships fail there,” he said.

“Students do a case study of it, they see all the values were incoherent. The value system was not the same. So good faith, I think, underpins that. That is one thing that I would really say is important.”

He emphasised that successful partnerships require more than capital pledges, they demand proven competence.

“If somebody says, can we be partners, and will capitalize, it’s very easy to say that. Now, you may need to check the competency of that statement. Will you be able to capitalize?” Matsekete said.

“Somebody comes and declares, ‘I’ve got access to China, and I’ve already done this, can we do this?’ The competency of each of the parties in the partnership must be tested.”

Matsekete also cautioned against alliances that create dominance.

“We sometimes come in the form of having more dominance, and therefore destroying markets and futures. When we are responsible, we should bring governance. We always have to test, is this also good for the economy, for the sector, for the industry?” he said.

Looking ahead, he argued that partnerships will become even more critical as customer demands grow increasingly complex, markets shift rapidly, and regulatory environments evolve.

“Partnerships will become more popular,” he said.

“The demands of the customers we sell to, of the markets we want to access, are becoming more complex, they are changing very fast, and they are also sometimes not clearly defined. You learn your way as you go. Now, can you think of the alternative? The alternative is to commit your own capital, your own resources, to try and catch up with the pace of change… That will demand more investment. So partnerships will answer for that.”

He added that the scale of modern business opportunities makes going it alone increasingly untenable.

“The business needs are themselves getting to be bigger. Opportunities sometimes scale, scalable, very scalable, and capital formations that would require to be able to be internal fail to come up. I then propose that partnerships come to be the way of doing it,” Matsekete said.

“We have to be competitive in the future, responsive, as well as be more effective. In fact, if you choose to do the alternative, chances are you become less competitive.”