Legal Articles and Guides

Steinhoff International Holdings NV’s former CEO Markus Jooste advised friends to sell the retailer’s shares days before the stock collapsed, according to a mobile phone text message reportedly seen by Bloomberg. The message, sent on or about 30 November 2017 to at least two people, told recipients there was unspecified bad news coming, notes the Bloomberg report in Business Day.

In November 2016, the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) rejected an application from the SA Property Owners’ Association to amend the Companies Act to give landlords preference over other creditors in business rescue proceedings. Now, says a Financial Mail report, the first substantial amendments to the Companies Act since it was implemented in 2011 – released for comment at the end of September – include a proposal that would give landlords the very rights that were strongly rejected by the High Court.

Hackers using state-of-the-art technology stole and defrauded South Africans out of R250m in a single year, according to the SA Banking Risk Information Centre (Sabric) when releasing the latest digital banking crime statistics yesterday. It revealed that in 2017 cyber-criminals were involved in 13 438 online‚ mobile and Internet banking attacks, and the total sum siphoned off in all digital banking-related crimes during that year was R250m.

McKinsey & Co, the global management consultancy accused of playing a prominent role in state capture, has paid back the interest owed to power utility Eskom, according to a Business Day report. Eskom confirmed yesterday it received R99.5m in interest from McKinsey on 23 July.

Commission-discounting real estate agencies, mainly owned by lawyers, are savaging the traditional agencies in the Eastern Cape over the latter’s high commission rates, ranging from 7% and sometimes up to 10%, depending on the complexity of the deal. As the fight gets nasty, the likely outcome will be commission cuts by all agencies, says attorney Laila Conlon, whose legal firm incorporates Conlon Prop, a 3.5% agency, notes a Daily Dispatch report.

ACKNOWLEGEMENT OF DEBT: “Promises make debt, and debt makes promises”

Steinhoff has given its creditors less than a week to agree to a three-year debt standstill that would give its board and management room to correct and restructure the business without the constant threat of liquidation proceedings. According to a Business Day report, Steinhoff implied that if sufficient creditor support is not obtained by 16 July, its key European operations could be faced with liquidation proceedings.

Vaping activists say the latest tobacco Bill is ignorant and not based on scientific evidence. The vaping industry has said it wants to be seen as a partner in SA’s health agenda because it is less harmful than smoking. According to a Saturday Star report, the Africa Harm Reduction Alliance’s (AHRA’s) Dr Delon Human noted the government wants to treat e-cigarettes in the same way that tobacco products are treated, falsely conflating vaping with smoking tobacco and, equally falsely, attributing the rise in the vaping industry to tobacco companies.

The BEE partners in a subsidiary of Tubular Technical Construction (TTC) have applied for provisional liquidation of the company after it failed to honour an agreement to pay R24m in outstanding dividends. TTC had paid R11m out of an agreed R35m, but had fallen into arrears to the tune of R8.45m, according to papers filed in the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria), notes a Moneyweb report.

An out-of-court agreement has been reached between 'Please Call Me' inventor Nkosana Makate and Vodacom, after the cell giant went to court to apply for a gag order against him, prohibiting the dissemination of any information regarding settlement negotiations between them.

A minority shareholder in the erstwhile KWV has succeeded in getting a court order for the valuation of shares in what is described as a ground-breaking judgment. According to a Beeld report, investor Albie Cilliers is the first known minority shareholder to successfully use section 164 of the Companies Act to exercise valuation rights.

Dutch Investors’ Association VEB has issued summons against Deloitte for breach of obligations when it audited Steinhoff Holdings, notes a Business Day report. VEB said it had summoned Deloitte to appear before the District Court of Rotterdam in relation to the losses suffered by the Steinhoff shareholders.

An ownership dispute over a multimillion-rand tourist lodge in Mpumalanga has gone to the SCA after a couple demanded decent accommodation for black staff and for a black manager to be paid as much as a junior, white administrator. A City Press report says Sibusiso and Ntombizodwa Tshabalala’s stake in Bundu Lodge is before the SCA after the former owner unsuccessfully applied to the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) to have the deal cancelled.

Transnet squandered billions of rands and broke a raft of regulations when it altered the terms of a deal to buy 1 064 new locomotives, an investigation by law firm Werksmans Attorneys has found, according to a Bloomberg report on the BusinessLIVE site.

Vodacom will spend R1.1bn on an employee share ownership scheme as part of its R17.5bn broad-based BEE deal – the biggest BEE deal in the telecommunications sector. A Business Day report says the scheme will benefit 4 637 permanent employees in SA.