Capitec Bank is the latest target of Viceroy Research – the team that produced an explosive report detailing how Steinhoff cooked its books to hide losses and inflate earnings, says a BusinessLIVE report. Viceroy describes Capitec as a ‘loan shark with massively understated defaults masquerading as a community finance provider’ in a report it released yesterday. ‘We believe that the SA Reserve Bank and Minister of Finance should immediately place Capitec into curatorship,’ it says. However, the Reserve Bank said that, based on available information, Capitec was solvent, well capitalised and had adequate liquidity. ‘The bank meets all prudential requirements,’ the central bank said in a statement. Capitec's chief financial officer Andre du Plessis said the allegations were unfounded, according to a TimesLIVE report. He denied the company was refinancing loans to conceal losses and said he hadn’t seen a copy of the report. ‘It’s very surprising that someone writes a report who knows nothing about us,’ Du Plessis said. ‘There’s a total lack of understanding of what we do.’

Full BusinessLIVE report

Full TimesLIVE report

Viceroy report

Capitec says the report is filled with ‘factual errors'. The bank's CEO Gerrie Fourie said he strongly refuted Viceroy's allegations. A Fin24 report says he accused Viceroy of not understanding the bank's business, getting its figures wrong, and publishing the report with a clear ‘profit motive’ to push down Capitec's price. He said that Capitec's number crunchers had been unable to replicate the results of Viceroy’s sums. The bank also later put out a detailed statement, in which it denied that it was granting loans to delinquent customers to repay existing loans. It also denied that Capitec was similar to Africa Bank, which was placed under curatorship in 2014.

Full Fin24 report