Marc Holtzman

Marc Holtzman was appointed Chairman of Rwanda's capital markets regulator by President Paul Kagame in April 2023, after fourteen years as Chairman and Board Member of Bank of Kigali. He joined that bank in 2009, when it held roughly $200 million in assets, and left it in 2023 holding $1.8 billion. Along the way it was privatized in one of Rwanda's two inaugural IPOs and built out a group structure spanning the country's largest insurer, an investment bank and a digital transformation unit, while net profit rose from about $10 million to a record $62 million in 2022. It is today the largest publicly listed company in Rwanda.

He chaired CBZ Holdings, Zimbabwe's largest financial institution, from 2019 to 2023. Net income there rose from $12 million to $82 million on KPMG audited numbers, more than two dozen senior executives were replaced or recruited, and the group acquired First Mutual Life, the country's premier insurance and property management company and the first major acquisition of its kind in Zimbabwe in 23 years. The United States Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control lifted $365 million of penalties that had stood against the institution for the prior decade. He now chairs Zimbabwe's Victoria Falls International Financial Center.

The pattern predates his work in Africa. From 2017 to 2023 he chaired the Astana Financial Services Authority, the regulator of Kazakhstan's international financial centre, appointed by President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Before that, as Chairman and then Chief Executive of KazKommertsBank from 2014 to 2017, he led the turnaround and sale of the nation's largest financial institution, cutting non-performing loans from $5 billion to $862 million and restoring it to profitability.

Earlier in his career he served as Vice Chairman of Barclays Capital and Vice Chairman of ABN Amro Bank. Marc joins Bullish Africa's roster of global leaders shaping the conversation on capital, governance, and Africa's next chapter at the upcoming summit.