The former BAIC SA CFO has been appointed as BDO Business Restructuring’s new COO.
Buhle Hanise will be dusting off her business rescue skills as the new chief operating officer at BDO Business Restructuring.
For the last three years, Buhle has been the CFO of automotive company BAIC SA. After meeting with the BDO team to discuss a possible career opportunity, she knew it was time to see what else is out there.
“I met up with the team running the business restructuring division,” Buhle explained. “I had worked with them before while I was working at the IDC, when they were our business rescue practitioners. After our conversation, I was hooked.”
While it might be daunting to take on a new role, in a new industry, Buhle is looking forward to expanding her capabilities as a leader. “It gives me the opportunity to be on the other side of the business. I’ve always been the funder, now I’ll be driving operations, restructuring and turning around businesses.”
She adds:
“I hope I’ll learn a lot about how different businesses work, and how entrepreneurship can be improved in South Africa.”
The new role, however, isn’t completely different from her role as CFO. “Majority of the work will be analysing the financial status of these companies,” Buhle explains. “Every business is started to make a profit. The minute it makes a loss is when you have to worry. My job will be to think about how we can turn those losses around and how to improve the revenue line to ensure the business is sustainable.”
Because of this, Buhle will be bringing a lot of her learnings from her previous role. “I’ll use what I’ve learned to analyse whether the financially distressed businesses are worth saving and then turn them around.”
Buhle began her career in accounting at a competitor firm in 2005, spending four years there until she moved onto Nedbank as a credit manager. She then took up the senior credit evaluation manager role at Standard Bank before becoming the senior business rescue specialist and team leader at the Industrial Development Corporation. In 2020, Buhle was appointed as the CFO at BAIC SA.
As a nod to her leadership skills, she serves as the non-executive director for multiple organisations including Transaction Capital, OUTsurance Holdings and its subsidiaries, Safcol, and while previously filling the role for Shishangeni Private Lodge, Windtown SA and BioDX Biological Chemical Technologies. Additionally, Buhle is the board chair of Summit Africa Private Equity and an Investment committee member of Mahlako Fund Financial Services.
Buhle holds memberships at The South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA), the Institute of Directors in Southern Africa (IoDSA), and South African Restructuring and Insolvency Practitioners (SARIPA).
