Barclays recently secured 56,1% control of Absa at a cost of about R31-billion, leaving black economic empowerment consortium Batho Bonke as the second largest shareholder, with 10%. Batho Bonke’s impeccable timing has gifted it a more than R3-billion theoretical profit on its Absa share options.
HCI, the JSE Securities Exchange-listed group, headed by former trade unionists Marcel Golding and John Copelyn, may be remembered as South Africa’s first black economic empowerment predator. It recently bid for control of Johnnic, its chief rival for control of Tsogo Investment Holdings, which in turn controls the casino and hotel assets of Tsogo Sun. HCI stands accused of sharp practice as it wages its casino war.
The extraordinary contest between rival empowerment groups over control of Tsogo Sun has led to both factions claiming board control to the point of running parallel board meetings. This dispute, one of several, is now being fought in court. One faction, led by Hosken Consolidated Investments, attempted to unseat Michael Leaf, chairperson of Tsogo Sun’s holding company.
The life industry’s reputation has taken a mauling this year as pension fund adjudicator Vuyani Ngalwana issued a blizzard of rulings in favour of consumers. Many of these rulings force the life companies to reimburse clients who have been over-charged in violation of their own rules, or where customers have been penalised for requesting that their investments be transferred.
Standard Bank is emerging as a key player in the black economic empowerment landscape, with significant investments in two of the country’s top empowerment groupings, Shanduka and Safika. The companies are led by Saki Macozoma and Cyril Ramaphosa respectively.
Discovery Life has thrown its hat into the retirement funding ring with the launch of Optimiser, a product the company says is made-to-order for those fed up with the high costs and lack of transparency in a much-criticised industry. This comes at a time when the government is overhauling the country’s retirement funding regulations.
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/ 14 January 2005
The Reserve Bank is likely to shut the door on foreign ownership after two of the Big Four retail banks acquire a foreign partner, an analyst suggested this week.
"The question is, when does the Reserve Bank close the door on foreign ownership of local banks? Maybe after two of the Big Four are in foreign hands, maybe three? In the end it may be more of a political decision than a commercial one".
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/ 22 October 2004
Gold Fields executives are fighting for their jobs after Harmony launched a hostile R53-billion bid for the world’s fourth-largest gold producer this week. If shareholders accept Harmony’s takeover offer, Gold Fields’s head office will disappear, along with many of its senior executives. There are also job fears on the shop floor.
The economy is the strongest it has been in a decade — but the best is yet to come. Economists believe economic growth could sail above 3% this year, well ahead of the 2,8% originally projected, buoyed by surging consumer confidence and higher manufacturing output. The impressive growth owes itself to the low inflation and surging consumer confidence.
The trade union movement last week celebrated the assurance by Minister of Public Enterprises Alec Erwin that the wholesale sell-off of state-owned assets was off the menu and that labour would in future be consulted on the restructuring of state enterprises. However, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) remained wary of aspects of Erwin’s watershed speech in Parliament.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) lambasted Telkom as South Africa’s "worst company from a labour and consumer perspective", after the utility announced bumper profits last week. Cosatu economist Neva Makgetla complained that the utility had downsized its labour force by more than half since the mid-Nineties
Vodacom put principle above profit when it announced its sudden withdrawal from the Nigeria cellular market this week, just two months after signing a management agreement with Econet Wireless Nigeria (EWN), which changed its name to Vee Networks in April.
Despite low interest rates and improving economic conditions, debt delinquency is now reckoned to be more than R40-billion in South Africa. Most of this — more than R24-billion — is owed to municipalities for unpaid services such as electricity and refuse removal. The culture of non-payment is still strong in South Africa.
The Zimbabwe Stock Exchange is reeling from a hyperinflation hangover. Having doubled on the back of an official inflation rate approaching 700% throughout last year, it has fallen 30% so far this year and is accelerating downwards. This is what happens when hyperinflation grips an economy. Those with cash are spending it as fast as they can because tomorrow it will be worthless.
Nedcor executives walked off with pay checks worth R109-million in 2002, having presided over the destruction of a quarter of the bank’s capital last year. Last week the bank announced a staggering R1,6-billion loss. Were Nedcor figures massaged to enrich executive carpetbaggers?
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/ 19 November 2003
Sam Buthelezi, the national president of the Foundation for African Business and Consumer Services and the first vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry South Africa, believes the new business unity structures are a vital step in the drection of bringing more black South Africans into the economic mainstream. He speaks to Ciaran Ryan.
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/ 19 November 2003
If business is to partner the government in promoting its socio-economic goals of job creation and economic growth, it wants a hand in writing the script. The government’s enthusiastic endorsement of the new unified business structures signals its desire for business to speak with one voice.
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/ 18 November 2003
After years of abortive attempts to get black and white business into nuptial embrace, the banns were finally read last month. Mbeki officiated as black and white business signed the nuptials. He has long campaigned for a unified voice in business. Unification would allow black business to share infrastructure built up by white organisations.
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/ 17 November 2003
Motor vehicle exports may be booming, courtesy of the Motor Industry Development Programme (MIDP), but where are the cheap cars and job growth promised when the programme was launched in 1996? That’s a question labour says has not been satisfactorily answered by the government or the motor industry.
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/ 21 October 2003
Many unit trust investors have suffered a bruising attrition of wealth over the past two years, and it may take years to get back to ground zero. Investors looking for value over the next six to 12 months should not count on any serious weakening in the rand.
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/ 21 October 2003
Investors pumped nearly R10-billion into unit trusts over the September quarter, pushing industry assets to R204-billion, equal to 4,4% of the JSE Securities Exchange’s market capitalisation.
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/ 21 October 2003
Is the current global market rally an "echo bubble" as some suggest, or a sustainable recovery after a three-year downturn? And if you missed the 29% rally in local stock prices since April, is it too late to get in?
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/ 21 October 2003
For all its efforts to strengthen ties with the region and the continent, South Africa imported a minuscule 3% of its needs from other African countries during the first six months of this year. The balance of trade with Africa is weighted eight-to-one in South Africa’s favour, aggravated by the economic collapse of it’s largest continental trading partner, Zimbabwe.
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/ 14 October 2003
Thinking of hiding your illegal offshore funds in a tax haven? Think again. Tax havens are an endangered species. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is attempting to shine a halogen lamp on the opaque world of tax havens.
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/ 14 October 2003
The tax and exchange control amnesty applies to individuals, closed corporations and deceased estates. Bryan Hirsch, CEO of Pioneer Financial Planning, warns that assets in your own name internationally will now attract estate duty.
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/ 14 October 2003
For those choosing to repatriate funds in terms of the tax amnesty, the question becomes where best to stash the cash: money market funds, unit trusts, gold or property? And don’t count on the rand remaining strong forever.
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/ 14 October 2003
Those with illegal funds offshore thought they’d probably never be caught, but that’s no longer certain. The world is a different place today, particularly after 9/11 when many countries passed laws to snuff out funding for terrorists and criminals.
The amnesty for those who illegally spirited funds out of South Africa closes on November 30, and the advice from tax experts is ignore it at your peril.