SA's Leading Managers - Leadership Excellence Awards Dinner

Ian Cockerill, CEO of Gold Fields Ltd, was named South Africa's 2007 Leading Manager by international research-based publisher CRF South Africa, at an intimate leadership excellence awards dinner held at Moyo Zoo Lake on 29 November 2007.

The Leadership Excellence in a Government Agency Award went to Lumkile Mondi, CEO of the Industrial Development Corporation.

The award for South Africa's Leading Executive Management Team, in recognition of team leadership excellence, was awarded to Jiri Kulik, Kerry Miller, Nitish Kapoor of Reckitt Benckiser.

The leadership dinner brought together 50 companies, and an intimate network of 130 key executive managers and CEOs who had a unique opportunity to hear from Heyneke Meyer as the keynote speaker on leadership, while relaxing at a corporate event with the opportunity to meet one another and interact on a personal level.

Emceed by Bongani Bingwa, it was the culminating event supporting the research-based publication: ‘South Africa's Leading Managers and the people who got them there'.

The publication is based on factual research into management best practice and leadership style in South Africa called the Leadership Benchmark.

It profiles the top percentile of leaders (CEOs, MDs and executive management teams) that elected to participate in the project as revealed by the Leadership Benchmark and each CEO, MD and executive management team (and their company's) are awarded with the Leadership Excellence accreditation-stamp.

This seals their standards of excellence in the market via a third-party endorsement based on robust research, imperative for communications with key stakeholders.

For the purposes of identifying and ranking SA's top 10 leaders we consulted a team of analysts, journalists and academics to vet and make recommendations based on their own market knowledge, transcriptions of interviews conducted by the CRF with participants and the research outcomes.

The top 10 leading managers in South Africa are:

Number 1: Ian Cockerill – Gold Fields Ltd
Number 2: Stephen Ross - Edcon
Number 3: Andre Meyer - Medscheme
Number 4: Adrian Gore - Discovery
Number 5: Stewart van Graan - Dell Computer
Number 6: Michael Solomon - Wesizwe Platinum
Number 7: Mike Flax - Madison Property Fund Managers Holdings
Number 8: Pfungwa Serima - Microsoft
Number 9: Paula Sartini - Espial
Number 10: Johan Fagan - sanofi-aventis south africa (pty) ltd

For the first time in the four year history of the project, two special awards were given out by two high achieving companies. The High Achiever award for achievement and contribution to the empowerment of South Africans within the local economy in 2007 went to Ragavan Moonsamy, MD of Unipalm Investment Holdings”
The first-ever CRF Publisher's Choice award in recognition of long-standing achievement in business leadership and management excellence, based upon consistently good management through the inculcation of high ethical principles throughout the organisation, went to Colia Louis (chairman) and Dr Alan Louis (CEO) of Louis Group.