BEE poster-woman Danisa Baloyi is likely to step aside or resign from her position as a director of Absa on Friday. The bank has been embarrassed by Baloyi’s links with the Fidentia scandal.
While it cannot ask for her resignation, bank executives have expressed concerns. An executive said she should take a leaf from the book of the University of KwaZulu-Natal vice-chancellor Malegapuru Makgoba and chancellor Vincent Maphai, who had stepped aside from the investigation of sexual harassment claims against them.
Baloyi was accused by the Financial Services Board (FSB) report on Fidentia Asset Management (FAM) of being exposed to a conflict of interest in her role as a trustee on the board of the Living Hands Trust.
Baloyi and fellow Living Hands trustee Hjalmar Mulder were both directors of Fidentia Holdings, the sole shareholder of FAM, the company managing the Living Hands Trust.
The FSB said this placed the two directors ‘in an untenable position relating to the performance of their fiduciary duties as trusteesâ€.
Baloyi has responded that she had no conflict of interest and has reportedly said the allegations against her suggest that ‘someone [is] out to get meâ€.
She chairs the South African Women’s Investment Holdings Alternative Investments (SAWIH), which owns 10% of Fidentia Holdings.
Fidentia’s curators have uncovered an R8-million loan Fidentia paid to her. Brown denied it had been written off, saying that it was a legitimate loan to help her capitalise her business assets.
Baloyi also helped manage the Fidentia South African Youth Choir and was a patron of the Fidentia Orphans Trust.
Named Businesswoman of the Year in 2003, she sits on a number of boards including Absa, the Advertising Standards Association, the Road Accident Fund, South African Women Investments and the National Skills Authority. She is also a director of Denel, MGX, the Don Group, AMB and Adcorp.
Baloyi wields enormous influence and was the first female chair of the Black Business Council, which set up the BEE commission — she is part of the 14-person presidential advisory team on BEE, which perhaps explain why she calls herself a ‘godmother of the black economic empowerment lawsâ€.
She is also a Chancellor at the Fort Hare University and holds a doctorate from Columbia University.
Attempts to get comment from business leaders this week were unsuccessful as all said ‘judicial processes†should run their course before they could comment.