A High Court hearing to sanction a scheme of arrangement for British banking group Barclays to acquire a controlling stake in South African banking group Absa has been postponed to Wednesday after three parties opposed the scheme.
The hearing was postponed to allow more time for preparation of arguments. There has been no argument on the merits of the case.
Both Absa and Barclays said they remain confident that the scheme will be sanctioned.
They also said that the envisaged timetable of the recommended acquisition remains unchanged.
The hearing has already been postponed once before. It had to be postponed a fortnight ago to allow more time for the remaining conditions for completion of the deal to be fulfilled.
Barclays had wanted at least 56,5% of Absa but was forced to waive down the minimum acceptance level to 50,1%, as by Monday it had only garnered 52,2% of the bank’s shares.
One of the groups opposing the deal is Jubilee South Africa, which has cited Barclays as one of the respondents in its class action against companies that allegedly benefited from apartheid.
Barclays pulled out of South Africa in the mid-1980s at the height of the anti-apartheid sanctions campaign against the country. It returned to the country a few years ago.
If the group succeeds in gaining a controlling stake in Absa, it will constitute the single biggest foreign investment in South Africa to date — roughly R33-billion. — I-Net Bridge