Star 2022-07-13

TONGAAT Hulett’s share price has surged more than 80 percent since the sugar and property group announced late last month that a rights issue underwriting deal with controversial financier, the Mauritius-based Magister, had been terminated. Yesterday, the share price closed up a substantial 20.99 percent to R4.90 on the JSE yesterday, following an announcement by Tongaat that Artemis Investments, a shareholder that has been among some very vocal other minority shareholders in their opposition to Tongaat’s plans for a R5 billion rights issue, had acquired shares in Tongaat to now equal 10 percent of the share capital. Artemis is understood to be headed by KwaZulu-Natal-focused property developer Charles Liasides. His company, Artemis Properties, owns a portfolio of retail centres in the province including Windermere Centre, Empangeni…

MORE THAN 10 000 Public Servants Association and National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) members working at the SA Revenue Service (Sars) recommenced their strike yesterday for an approximate 12 percent wage increase. This was according to Nehawu spokesperson Lwazi Nkolozi, who told Business Report that their members had decided to reject as “an insult” a 1.39 percent annual increase that had been proposed by Sars. Sars, in the meantime, yesterday advised the public not to come to its offices due to the strike. The tax authority said it did not decide on its own funding, but was dependent on an annual allocation made through a process managed by the National Treasury. “The demand of labour of CPI plus 7 percent is simply unaffordable…

LOAD SHEDDING could be the death knell for job creation efforts in South Africa and could possibly rise the rate of unemployment back above the 35 percent mark as small businesses are forced to close shop during ongoing power cuts. This comes as Eskom yesterday said it would implement Stage 3 load shedding today and tomorrow due to deteriorating generation capacity. However, the struggling power utility said load shedding would be eased to lower levels throughout the week as some units return to service. South Africa’s unemployment rate stands at a staggering 34.5 percent, the highest rate of joblessness across the world. Daniel Goldberg, co-founder and chief executive of Bridgement, a fintech credit provider to small businesses, yesterday said load shedding was significantly affecting small businesses that…

THE RAND continued its descent yesterday on the back of a stronger US dollar, falling to its weakest in 23 months. The domestic currency has come under severe pressure from aggressive monetary policy tightening by the US Federal Reserve and the general risk-off sentiment plaguing markets. The rand weakened to R17.18 to the greenback during early trade, the lowest since August 2020, also dragged lower by weakening commodity prices amid fears of rising US inflation rate, before pairing gains to R17.04/$1 by 4pm. According to a poll by Bloomberg, inflation in the US is expected to rise 8.8 percent year-on-year in June compared with 8.6 percent in May. If expectations meet reality, this would mark the fastest increase in consumer prices since the 8.9 percent figure back…

GLOBAL oil prices continued to slide yesterday as mounting fears of a global economic slowdown weighed on the market. The price of Brent crude oil fell more than 5 percent to $101 (R1 717)per barrel in afternoon trade as China’s fresh Covid-19 restrictions could lead to a drop in fuel demand, while the energy crisis in Europe persists. This was the lowest the Brent crude price has been since April 11 while the West Texas Intermediate plunged 4 percent and fell below the psychological $100 level. ActivTrades senior analyst Ricardo Evangelista said oil prices dropped as the markets appeared increasingly convinced that a global economic slowdown was coming. “With inflation remaining high and forcing central banks and fiscal authorities to withdraw stimulus, an energy crisis in Europe…

MANUFACTURING production in South Africa is expected to continue on a downward spiral on the back of crippling power cuts in spite of falling less than expected in May. Data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) yesterday showed that manufacturing output shrank by 2.3 percent from a year earlier in May as half of the manufacturing divisions recorded a decline in activity. This was slightly better than market forecasts of a 2.4 percent decline, but marked the third consecutive month of contraction in manufacturing activity following a significant downwardly revised 7.6 percent slump in April. The Don Consultancy Group chief economist Chifi Mhango said the manufacturing print in May declined at a slower pace than in the previous month, thus reflecting a slight recovery from the negative impact…