Star 2024-11-18

Barloworld said on Friday in a statement it had entered into negotiations for the management buyout (MBO) with a consortium of investors, acting through a newly established special purpose vehicle. If concluded, this will result in the consortium making an offer to acquire Barloworld’s shares. The shares to be acquired exclude those acting in concert with the buyout consortium, namely the Barloworld Empowerment Foundation. The acquiring consortium comprises Entsha Proprietary and Gulf Falcon Holding. Entsha is a South African company owned by The Katlego Le Masego Trust, an inter vivos trust established for Barloworld CEO Dominic Sewela and his family. Gulf Falcon Holding is a subsidiary of the Zahid Group, a multidisciplinary conglomerate headquartered in Saudi Arabia, which is already an 18.9% shareholder in Barloworld. The possible MBO elicited some…

Allegations of excessive pricing of Trastuzumab, impacting thousands of SA women living with the condition The Cancer Alliance, represented by SECTION27, has been admitted as an intervening party in the Competition Commission’s excessive pricing case against Roche Holdings, a Switzerland-based multinational healthcare company, and its subsidiaries, over breast cancer drug pricing. The case, brought before the Competition Tribunal, alleges that Roche charged excessively high prices for Trastuzumab, a life-saving treatment for HER2-positive breast cancer. Trastuzumab is used to stop the development of these tumour cells to prevent the cancer from spreading and death. In South Africa, Trastuzumab is sold under Roche’s brand name Herceptin in the private healthcare sector and under the brand name Herclon in the public healthcare sector. The Competition Commission argues that these prices restricted access to…

South Africa must ensure that competent people are running the country to enable growth, while also bringing in the private sector to tackle infrastructure issues that were a drain on the fiscus. This was according to Saki Zamxaka, group CEO of the Gauteng Growth and Development Agency, last week at the 11th annual SA-EU CEO Dialogue on Southern Africa hosted by The European House – Ambrosetti. Zamxaka said he had challenged colleagues in government to create a $1 trillion economy, from $400 billion, in South Africa. However, that would mean growing GDP to 5% each year to reach that target in the next two decades, or 10% per annum to reach that target in the next 10 years. “Now there’s a quote I like by Henry Ford that whether you…

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is expected to cut interest rates for the second time in a row during the last Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting for the year this week. This comes as disinflation in South Africa supports expectations for a 25 basis point cut by the SARB, with headline consumer inflation reaching 3.8% in September, in spite of uncertainty about the US Federal Reserve’s (Fed’s) stance since the election of Donald Trump back to the White House. This would be a welcome relief for financially constrained consumers as the rates cut would put some money in their pockets ahead of the Black Friday and festive season shopping period. It also comes as ratings agencies have started to look at South Africa’s economic performance with a renewed eye…

The leisure industry is at an exciting inflection point with growth likely to be supported by a stronger consumer, growth of online gambling and the continued recovery in tourism. Looking ahead, the macroeconomic environment continues to improve with several tailwinds supporting consumption. Interest rates are coming down as inflation remains within the lower end of the South African Reserve Bank’s targeted range. There is also more optimism around the growth outlook as loadshedding has significantly reduced and business confidence improves. This should support job creation. The spending of withdrawals from the two-pot retirement system should be a further boost for consumers. We also believe the market may be underestimating the potential growth of online gambling in South Africa. The sector boomed during the pandemic, and we have continued to see…

The International Trade Administration Commission (Itac) has just accepted comments on the Price Preference System (PPS), the set of rules that force scrap metal generators and recyclers to sell their scrap metal at a discount to local consumers. Only if these consumers don’t want the product are they allowed to export the scrap. Itac will review the submissions and arrive at a conclusion, which they will publish in a report. This is good process even if I sometimes disagree with their conclusions. One of the responses filed is from five mini-mills (the buyers of scrap). Each person absolutely should have their say, but they take this a step further saying, “the SA Government needs to ensure that, for the public engagements to be fruitful and deliver outcomes representative of the…