Naspers, Africa’s largest company by market capitalisation worth R717 billion ($39 billion), has appointed  Fabricio Bloisi as  CEO. This follows the abrupt resignation of Bob van Dijk in September 2023. Like van Dijk, Bloisi will also serve as the CEO of Prosus, a subsidiary of Naspers whose portfolio companies include Udemy, Stack Overflow, Tencent, SimilarWeb and SkillsSoft.

Bloisi, who will assume the role from 1 July, will be replacing Edwin Wu who was appointed as interim CEO following van Dijk’s departure. He is currently the CEO of iFood, a food delivery company and Naspers portfolio company based in Brazil.

Bloisi takes over a company currently experiencing a bloated structure caused by a large discount between its share price and net asset value (NAV). While Naspers shares trade at R4,074 per share, the company’s NAV is R6,622 per share — boosted by its stake in Chinese tech giant Tencent held via Prosust. Over the last two years, the company has embarked on a share repurchase program to reduce the discount.

“Fabricio is an entrepreneur with a proven track record. His appointment as CEO places innovation and entrepreneurship at the heart of [Naspers],” board chair Koos Bekker told shareholders this morning.

According to his LinkedIn profile, before joining iFood in 2015 as chairman of the board and eventually CEO, Bloisi was president of Fundação 1Bi, a foundation “promoting technology projects with social impact.” He also served as founder and CEO of Movile, a mobile services company which would eventually become a lead shareholder in iFood with Prosus.

He also has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Universidade Estadual de Campinas, an MBA from Fundação Getulio Vargas and executive program certifications from Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Harvard Business School.