Star 2023-12-01

MOZAMBICAN family-owned group RGS has won the bids to take over ailing Tongaat Hulett (THL) with a R3.6 billion debt-for-equity offer, plus some R500 million in working capital. The terms of southern Africa’s biggest sugar producers’ business rescue plan that was released yesterday showed that Tongaat will also retain its listing though the process and existing shareholders will retain a 5% shareholding in Tongaat. Tongaat went into business rescue in October last year. RGS also undertook to sell down its 95% shareholding to a 51% to 60% stake within a year of the deal being done, in order to leave sufficient free float in Tongaat’s shares to enable it to remain listed. RGS Holdings is owned by the Gulamo family and produces sugar in Marromeu, Sofala province in…

BILLIONAIRES increased in numbers and overall wealth last year, Swiss bank UBS said yesterday, with the fortunes inherited by the newly-minted super-rich exceeding cash generated by self-made billionaires for the first time in years. The number of billionaires rose by 7% to 2 544 people globally, UBS said in its 2023 Billionaires Ambitions Report, with their total worth rising by 9% to an estimated $12 trillion (R223trln). For the first time since the study started in 2015, billionaires accumulated more wealth via inheritance than through their own business activities. Among the 137 new billionaires, a total of $150.8 billion was inherited by 53 heirs over the past year, exceeding the 84 new self-made billionaires’ total of $140.7bn, the bank said. The generational wealth transfer was gaining momentum…

Like many other industries, Ford has had to fly freight in as a result of the port backlogs FORD SOUTH Africa president Neale Hill has sounded another warning to the government to get its house in order before the vehicle manufacturing industry faces total collapse. “It’s not about to happen immediately, but I fear that investments from parent companies are likely to stop after 2028 if the current situation continues,” he said at the local launch of the Ford Puma in Cape Town on Wednesday night. His comments follow a recent interview with Volkswagen Global CEO Thomas Schäfer where he said he was “very worried” about the future viability of its Gqeberha plant as a result of blackouts, rising labour costs and the county’s chaotic port delays and crumbling rail…

SOUTH African asset manager Stanlib yes- terday launched an energy fund that aims to attract $1 billion (R19bn) by the end of 2028, to finance greener energy projects across the African continent. The launch of the Khanyisa Energy Transition Fund comes amid a global move towards more environmentally-friendly energy options. The COP28 summit opened yesterday with a plea to countries and fossil fuel compa- nies to work together to meet global climate goals. “The need and urgency for mobilising capital into some of these (climate) commitments is greater today," said Johan Marnewick, Stanlib's head of credit alternatives and portfolio manager. South Africa has secured $676 million in grants from rich nations for a transition to green energy, in addition to the $8.5bn pledged by developed nations at COP26, a figure…

THE SOUTH African National Energy Development Institute (Sanedi) has argued that coal still has a place in the country’s energy mix as it faces the prospect of a dark Christmas period due to intensified power cuts. This comes as load shedding continues to wreak havoc in the economy as Eskom is forced to implement intensified power cuts due to breaking generation units. Sanedi’s clean coal research specialist, Gcobisa Melamane, yesterday said peak demand had always been met by pumped-storage schemes that store and release water to generate electricity, as well as open-cycle gas turbines that run on diesel. Melamane said that renewable energy options were increasingly adding to capacity and displacing some of the coal-generated supply from ageing power stations. However, she said commercial, industrial and manufacturing enterprises could not…

SA Canegrowers SOUTH African Canegrowers welcomes the order issued on Wednesday in the High Court of South Africa, Durban Local Division, dismissing with costs the application by Tongaat Hulett and the Business Rescue Practitioners to challenge the financial obligations on the miller in terms of the Sugar Act and the Sugar Industry Agreement. This order follows the failure of Tongaat Hulett and Gledhow mills to pay more than R1.5 billion due to the South African Sugar Association (Sasa) at the end of March 2023. As a consequence of these de- faults, the final recoverable value (RV) price for growers in the 2022/2023 season dropped by more than R400 per ton, with significant financial implications for growers and compromising the sustainability of their operations. The business rescue practitioners at Tongaat…