South Africa's FirstRand CEO to retire, names deputy as successor

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JOHANNESBURG, Feb 27 (Reuters) - South African lender FirstRand said on Tuesday its group Chief Executive Johan Burger will retire at the end of March after two and a half years at the helm and be succeeded by his deputy Alan Pullinger.

Pullinger, who has been with the group since 1998, will take the helm from April 1, the banking group said in a statement.

He takes over the firm that is seeking to grow its revenue beyond its home continent after it agreed in November to a 1.1 billion pound ($1.54 billion) takeover of British banking newcomer Aldermore Group (Frankfurt: ADO.F - news) .

"He has been fully involved in the design and build-out of the current domestic, regional and UK diversification strategies and the board believes that he is the ideal candidate to lead the group forward in the realisation of those strategies," FirstRand's chairman Laurie Dippenaar said.

FirstRand, with a market capitalisation of 423 billion rand ($37 billion), also announced the appointment of deputy CEO of South African life insurer MMI Holdings, Mary Vilakazi as group Chief Operations Officer, effective July 1.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in the firm were up 1.13 percent to 76.30 rand by 0856 GMT. ($1 = 11.5783 rand) ($1 = 0.7154 pounds) (Reporting by Nqobile Dludla; Editing by James Macharia)