Departure of the year: Imperial’s Mark Lamberti
No-one struggled with Mark Lamberti being forced to bow out of corporate SA quite as much as he did
No-one struggled with Mark Lamberti being forced to bow out of corporate SA quite as much as he did. Despite a long and illustrious career, in 2018 Lamberti went from corporate hero to persona non grata in the space of three words — "female employment equity". Lamberti spent the better part of his career building Massmart into a multibillion-rand retail empire, and in 2014 the entrepreneurial veteran was brought in as CEO of industrial company Imperial Holdings. But it all went south when Lamberti described Adila Chowan as a "female employment equity" candidate when explaining to her that she would not be promoted to CFO within the Imperial Group as promised. Chowan wrote to then Imperial chair Thulani Gcabashe and an investigation was launched; the complaint was found to be "devoid of substance" and Chowan was dismissed for abuse of the grievance process. She took the matter to court, which found in April that her claim for damage to her dignity was proven on both a subjective and ...
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