BUA Cement has announced the appointment of Jacques Piekarski as Chief Financial Officer/ Executive Director. The appointment became effective October 2, 2020, the company said.
This makes him the second LafargeHolcim alumnus to secure a key position in Nigeria’s cement industry in seven months. Michel Pucheros joined Dangote Cement in February, 2020 after serving as Director of Strategy and Systems at Lafarge Gypsum and heading Lafarge operations in Tanzania and Nigeria. Prior to this, the Dangote Group had relied on the expertise of another Lafarge man, Joseph Makoju, a former Managing Director of Lafarge (when the company was known as WAPCO) to develop its cement business. Makoju was Group Chief Executive Officer at Dangote.
A Swiss national and graduate of Business School Lausanne, Switzerland, Jacques Piekarski has served as Chief Financial Officer of the global cement giant LafargeHolcim in Egypt, a role in which he developed a knowledge of the cement business. While in the CFO position at LafargeHolcim, the business built a single cement producing plant with capacity of 8 million tons, the second largest in the world.
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Mr. Piekarski is joining Bua Cement from TGI Group, the Ilupeju, Lagos based Indian-owned conglomerate with investment in agriculture, consumer goods, industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals, where he was Group Chief Financial Officer. Prior to joining TGI, he had worked at Flour Mills of Nigeria where he was also Group Chief Financial Officer.
Mr. Yusuf Binji, Managing Director/CEO of BUA Cement Plc, said about his appointment: “We are thrilled to welcome Jacques Piekarski to BUA Cement. Jacques brings a wealth of experience to this role – both in the Nigerian cement industry and the African region as a whole. I am certain his skills and experience will make a significant contribution and continue to drive the company forward.“
With 33.9 billion shares listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in January, at N35 per share, BUA Cement Plc became the third-largest company on the local bourse. The listing put BUA’s capitalisation at N1. 2trillion.
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LafargeHolcim is the world’s leading building materials manufacturer, with operations in over 90 countries in the world. The Nigeria operations is currently led by Khaled El Dokani who has worked with Lafarge in the United States of America, Europe and the Middle East before taking over leadership of the Nigerian business from Michel Pucheros. LafargeHolcim prides itself on having the industry’s deepest “leadership bench”, i.e. experienced managers with a blend of technical and business skills garnered from working across the over 90 countries the LafargeHolcim operates in. Its Research and Development centre in Lyon, France, supported by a network of laboratories in five continents, holds over 1,000 patents. It is the first of its kind in the industry.
