Bank closes property group's accounts
Standard Bank closed the bank accounts of the Nova Property Group, the rescue vehicle of the failed Sharemax investment scheme, late last year, according to a Moneyweb report.
In the minutes of a Nova board meeting held in November last year it was disclosed that two Standard Bank representatives visited Nova in July and informed it that the bank was ‘no longer interested in doing business with NPG (Nova Property Group) and all NPG accounts will be closed on 3 September 2018’.
The deadline was later extended to mid-December. It is not clear why Standard Bank, which has been Nova’s bank for many years, decided to terminate the relationship, notes Moneyweb. It is also apparent from the minutes that Nova commenced with the drafting of legal papers to stop the termination of the relationship.
‘Nova is presently preparing an urgent application to court, if Nova so decides, to stop the bank from closing Nova accounts and that they have no legal basis to do so, or to get a declarator to give Nova 24 months to migrate Nova’s circa 160 bank accounts to another bank,’ the minutes read.
The minutes also state that Nova was already investigating the option to move the accounts to Absa. Moneyweb says it has learnt that the group managed to migrate its accounts to Absa before the closure of the Standard Bank accounts.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
