Global Meets Local – Top 50 Executives Regional Executives Heading International Companies
Rank: #45

Dirk Karl

Sector: Telecom
Company: MTN Group – Global Sourcing and Supply Chain
Designation: Group Executive and Chief Procurement Officer, Middle East
Nationality: German
Headquarters: South Africa
Local Headquarters: U.A.E.
Karl joined MTN in 2017. Today he oversees an annual spend of $12 billion across 21 operations and two continents. Under his leadership, the MTN Group has entered into a number of intermediary services agreements with vendors, which are a new commercial setup that have added more than 25% in external revenues for the sourcing business. Karl has helped to increase the EBITDA results of the sourcing business by more than 30%. In 2020 he also implemented a new division in data science, developing in-house tools using machine learning and artificial intelligence.