In a novel empowerment deal, an investment company will double your shares provided you meet a few criteria. Ferial Haffajee reports
IT’S an offer you can’t refuse … if you’re a bona fide woman, and you can prove it by affidavit. Women Investment Portfolio Holdings (Wiphold) is offering to double the shares bought by women who take up its public share offer later this month.
A public share offer does not mean the company will list on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, but that it will make its shares available to the public with a view to listing in a year or two. A minimum investment will cost R2 000. This means most women will have to invest jointly.
In a novel discount share option, all women who buy shares will receive an equal number of shares in the Wiphold Trust.
The trust plans to ensure women’s empowerment does not become just another buzzword. One way in which this will be done is through shares held in the trust having greater voting power than ordinary shares. The trust will also appoint Wiphold’s directors.
“This provides a unique empowerment vehicle to ensure that women are catered for should Wiphold list. Then shares can land up in anybody’s hands,” says Mojela.
Wiphold has grown out of a smaller company, Women Investment Portfolio, which was started 18 months ago by four go-getters: Gloria Tomatoe Serobe (a Transnet executive director), Wendy Luhabe (a management consultant), Nomhle Gcabashe and Louisa Mojela (both former bankers).
“We used to meet every Tuesday after work to plan our investments,” says Mojela, who together with Gcabashe will work as Wiphold’s executive director.
The four women, who all held other high- powered full-time jobs, went around the country prompting rural women involved in stokvels, savings associations, self-help schemes and community organisations to invest with them. They had meetings and lobbied hard, although sometimes regarded quizzically by rural mamas as “these youngsters from Jo’burg”.
Their prodding paid off and soon women were lining up to invest; now they’re lining up to buy shares.
Lawyer Christine Qunta says: “Women’s investment companies have a different feel, they’re more down-to-earth. Women have been saving successfully through the worst repression in stokvels and burial societies.
“These companies can bring about a radical change in the economy, especially if women continue to be self-reliant and raise their own money. You don’t have to rush off to a merchant bank to raise money.”
That’s what Wiphold is planning to do with its share offer, though Mojela is a little cagey about the company’s existing investments.
But she says they give preference to blue- chip companies. They already own shares in the clothing chain-store Smart Centre, an investment trust called Baobab, a rural financing company called Kind Finance Services and Radio Highveld. Wiphold has also put in a bid to buy government-owned Sun Air.
The company will invest in those sectors of the economy where women have the greatest oomph, be that consumer clout or in sectors where women workers constitute a majority.
Consumer goods and media companies will be among Wiphold’s first selection. It has already been Sun International’s partner in a range of bids for casino licences across the country.
But perhaps the most innovative area to watch Wiphold move into is agriculture. Mojela says it is a logical step as most farmworkers are women and agriculture is gaining a healthy slice of the export cake.
“Women can, for example, buy a winery farm in Cape Town. Then we can offer a share incentive scheme so workers feel they are part of the company. You know that the more you work, the more dividends will come through,” says Mojela.
The women’s investment company has struck a chord around the country with provincial businesswomen getting together to invest in Wiphold.
In the Eastern Cape, a group of 50 professional women led by Dr Nomsa Mazwai has been yoked together under the banner of the Ladies Investment Group, which will take up shares in Wiphold. Another such group exists in the Western Cape.
Mazwai’s task is to ensure the company has an impact on more than just the industrial heartland of Gauteng.
Wiphold is taking root in rural areas, but there is a message which the company’s directors will be taking on the roadshows planned once the public share offer is made. “We would like to plough back profits into the company. That needs to be made clear to stockholders; you put in your money and forget about it for two to three years,” says Mojela.