Safaricom is Kenya’s most profitable mobile service carrier, and the company’s CEO Bob Collymore is probably the highest paid Telecom CEO in the country.
Robert William Collymore best known as Bob Collymore took part in an asset declaration form during a launch of an Anti-corruption conference held on Tuesday ahead of the World Anti-Corruption Day in Kenya. In his asset declaration form, it emerged Collymore takes home $1.068 million in a year.
He holds no assets in Kenya except for his $180,000 shares in Safaricom. He has other shares in Vodafone PLC worth $871,000 and own a residential home in the UK valued at $530,000. His liquid cash in both foreign and local accounts amounts to about $980,000.
When summed up, Bob Collymore is worth about $3.8 million. That is including his salary in the last one year. At the Anti-corruption conference, Collymore, who also happens to be a board member of the United Nations Global Compact, said that corruption is a big obstacle to sustainable economic, political and social development.
Safaricom as a company is ranked as Kenya’s largest taxpayer. The Telecom dominates the Kenya local market with the highest number of subscribers and is said to take up to 90 percent of telecom revenues. Its competitors in the local telecom market have certainly cried foul by Safaricom, which they say has grown to be too dominant that it is stifling healthy competition in the market.
Notably, Bharti Airtel as the biggest rival to Safaricom has called upon the Communication Authority of Kenya to declare Safaricom as a market dominant. In 2014, Safaricom got 91.63 percent of the telecom’s revenue from voice calls. While Airtel only managed to get 8.33 percent of the total voice revenue. When it comes to revenues from SMS, Safaricom got more than 90 percent of the market revenue. This data is according to the market regulator.