Star 2024-11-21

WesBank and its CEO Ghana Msibi have been exonerated of any wrongdoing following the dismissal of all charges by the SAPS and the senior public prosecutor, the vehicle finance bank said in a statement yesterday. WesBank received confirmation from the SAPS and the senior public prosecutor that the cases of fraud brought by Emerald van Zyl had been formally dismissed. An online search showed that Van Zyl had opened a case of fraud at the Bellville police station in Cape Town in July. Van Zyl had alleged, also in media reports, that WesBank had overcharged its black clients on their vehicle finance accounts based on incorrect interest calculations. “Following their investigation into the fraud charges … the SAPS and the prosecutor in the case have elected not to pursue any…

Electricity and Energy Minister Kgosientsho Ramokgopa said yesterday that an update on the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) will be available in the first quarter of next year. On November 26 there will be a stakeholder engagement meeting with those entities who submitted “substantive” comments after the draft IRP 2023 was released on January 4, 2024. The original target was to have IRP 2023 ready in May 2024, but after receiving more than 4 300 comments, the government decided to relook at the IRP and have the South African National Energy Development Institute incorporate some of the suggestions. “The draft IRP 2023 had two time horizons. The first one was until 2030 and that was to address the problem of load shedding. I am happy to say that on November…

Tiger Brands said yesterday that it had entered into a sale of business agreement to dispose of its Baby Wellbeing business to an unrelated third-party purchaser for R605 million as part of its optimisation strategy to simplify the company’s portfolio of brands. In addition, the purchaser will also acquire inventories relating to the Baby Wellbeing business on the effective transaction date, currently expected to be approximately R25m in value. However, the sale of business agreement is subject to suspensive conditions, including the regulatory approval of the competition authorities. The agreement follows the successful sale of select non-core home and personal care brands that include Bio Classic, Bio Crystal, Kair, Fiesta, Black Silk and Eulactol for a total cash consideration of R161m, inclusive of inventories, effective September 30, 2024. The purchaser…

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) will not give financially-constrained consumers the Christmas relief they were expecting with a deep cut in the interest rates today in spite of inflation plunging further below its 3-6% target range and to its lowest level in 4-and-a-half years. Instead, economists yesterday said the SARB will likely overlook this slowing down of consumer prices and only cut rates by 25 basis points as the headline inflation base will start normalising next year on the back of the US president-elect Donald Trump implementing drastic import tariffs. Data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) yesterday showed that the annual consumer price index (CPI) cooled for a fifth consecutive month and declined sharply from 3.8% year-on-year in September to 2.8% October, largely driven lower by declining fuel and…

Move involving transfer of about R400bn in assets to global asset manager raises concerns in SA Sanlam Group has appointed Ninety One as its primary active investment managers for single-managed assets, a move that will involve the transfer of some R400 billion of assets to the global asset manager, but which has raised some competition concerns locally. In recognition of the value transferred, Ninety One, a company that before 2020 was part of Investec’s operations in South Africa, intends to issue shares to Sanlam, giving Sanlam about 12.3% of Ninety One’s share capital. Ninety One is South Africa’s second- largest asset manager – the state-owned Public Investment Corporation is the biggest. Ninety One will remain an independent investment manager with staff as its largest shareholder. Ninety One CEO Hendrik du…

Strengthening consumer demand and an absence of load shedding provided a boost to business confidence in the fourth quarter of 2024, data from RMB and the Bureau for Economic Research (BER) showed yesterday, highlighting that rising productivity provided additional support. This saw the RMB/BER Business Confidence Index for the fourth quarter 2024 rising to 45 index points, up from 38 in the third quarter. However, though confidence is improving, it is still depressed below the 50-mark point which separates expansion from contraction as “just under half of the respondents are satisfied with prevailing business conditions”. There has been improving business sentiment after the May 29 elections that ushered in a Government of National Unity (GNU). “The slow, but steady increase in business confidence in recent quarters is an encouraging development.…