The Anglo-South African financial services company said Leith would be responsible for the "coordinated execution of the managed separation" and would work with its finance director and strategy director.

Leith joins Old Mutual from a private investment company.

Regulatory changes in Europe and South Africa have made the Old Mutual, which started out in 1845 as a life insurance firm in Cape Town, more complex to run in its current form, it said on Friday.

(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru)

Stocks treated in this article : Nedbank Group Ltd., Old Mutual plc