Listed financial services group Metropolitan Holdings expects to return some amount of excess capital to shareholders in its new 2004 financial year, probably via some combination of a share buy-back programme, special dividend and strong dividend policy, according to CEO Peter Doyle.
The colours are vivid, the lines simply drawn, a strangely idealised version of what Nelson Mandela saw — or wished to see — through the bars of the tiny cell where he spent 27 years for resisting South Africa’s apartheid regime.
Officials in Madagascar have had no word of a ferry carrying 113 passengers and crew since a cyclone ripped across the Indian Ocean island, killing at least 11 and leaving tens of thousands homeless. The ferry reached the Mahajanga port at 5pm on Sunday but was not allowed to dock because customs officers were not on duty.
Cyclone wreaks havoc on island
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”Campaigning for South Africa’s general elections, to be held next month, has moved into top gear — with politicians scrambling for an endorsement from the country’s 20,7-million registered voters. ”The parties are now in full-swing campaign mood,” says Khabele Matlosa of the Johannesburg-based Electoral Institute of Southern Africa.
South African paper and packaging firm Mondi will seek the control of Portuguese paper giant Portucel if it wins a privatisation sell-off, the head of Mondi said on Tuesday. ”We want to have control so we can carry out our strategy for the firm,” Mondi chief executive officer David Hathorn told Portuguese news agency Lusa.
Last week’s announcement by Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni that the Net Open Forward Position (NOFP), or apartheid dollar overdraft, has been closed is more than just a feather in our fiscal manager’s cap at the National Treasury and Reserve Bank.
Six premature babies have died and one is in a critical condition at Pelonomi hospital in Bloemfontein due to possible contaminated parenteral nutrition, the hospital said on Tuesday. Spokesperson Elke de Witt said the babies died between March 4 and 5 at the hospital’s neonatal paediatric unit.
An aircraft seized by the Zimbabwe government on Sunday was carrying men believed to be linked to a South African mercenary company and to the elite British Special Air Services regiment, the Zimbabwe government said on Tuesday night.
Zim plane definitely not South African
Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most male-dominated countries, is preparing to break with tradition and risk the wrath of religious conservatives by allowing women to take part in its first elections.
Shortly before Germany’s Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, flew to Washington for talks with United States President George Bush last month, a journalist asked if he was going to say goodbye to Bush ahead of the US elections in November. Schroeder’s adviser grinned broadly before composing his face into a frown. "I won’t speculate on that," he said.