Cape Times 2021-11-08

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za Purple Group has made a fair value adjustment of R50 million in relation to subsidiary EasyEquities’ option to acquire a 51 percent stake in EasyCrypto, formerly known as DCX Capital. Purple Group said in a trading statement on Friday that the value of the stake had increased significantly over the past six months due to increased investment activity and client adoption of the EasyCrypto 10 product. Over 100 000 EasyEquities clients were invested in the EasyCrypto 10 bundle, with an investment value of more than R500m. Purple Group also said that headline earnings per share for the year to August 31 were expected to rise by between 185 and 195 percent when compared to the 1.54 cents reported in the prior financial…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za Finance minister Enoch Godongwana will have to play open cards to convince investors and ratings agencies that South Africa’s finances are stable amid some of the worst economic indicators in decades. Unemployment has worsened to record levels, with more than 7.2 million people of working age officially jobless as the Covid-19 pandemic culled many businesses. Eskom’s ongoing power cuts are also constraining economic growth, which could possibly push South Africa’s sovereign debt deeper into sub-investment territory. Godongwana will on Thursday table his maiden Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement (MTBPS) after his eccentric predecessor quit the post in a huff when trade unions shot down his austere budgets. The MTBPS sets the tone for the country’s fiscal policy and the government’s spending priorities for the next three years, and…

Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za MTN GROUP’S shares soared to close to 13 percent up on Friday after the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) finally granted approval in principle for MTN Nigeria to operate its proposed Mobile Money (MoMo) service. The shares closed at R167 on the JSE. “This is the first step in the process towards a final approval, subject to the fulfilment of certain conditions as stipulated by the CBN,” said Uto Ukpanah, MTN’s company secretary. The news is a boost for MTN and rival Airtel Africa, which have been awaiting the granting of PSB licences since 2018, when the CBN indicated its intention to do so. The companies are expected to meet a number of conditions before receiving the Payment Service Bank (PSB) licence required by the CBN…

Edward West edward.west@inl.co.za THE BIG INTERNATIONAL online tourism booking and event platforms impose pricing parity policies on the venues listed on their sites, not good news for consumers looking for cheaper prices and it stifles marketing innovation among tourist venues and resorts. This emerged on Friday at the third day of the Competition Commission’s Online Intermediation Platform Market Inquiry. Reinard du Plessis, general manager of marketing at ATKV, a local camping and resorts company, told the inquiry that the conditions of being listed with the large international travel booking platforms included that the venue needed to ensure its prices and rates were the same across all the online booking agencies that the venue had contracted to list with, although the venue was free to post promotional prices on its own…

IF A MEASURE of black economic empowerment is based on ownership and economic transformation, we can green tick the PioTrans model. It is based on Johannesburg’s Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) system, which saw the formalisation of a tenuous cohabitation of sole proprietorships into a corporate entity providing real shareholding for 299 taxi owners and providing formal and permanent employment for their drivers. When it was first rolled out in 2010, the Rea Vaya BRT initially encountered significant reservations from various stakeholders. Although the BRT’s primary objective was improving public transport, a crucial intention behind the introduction of a high-quality BRT system to Johannesburg was the incorporation and transitioning of taxi drivers and owners into a formal structure. Yet the process was not without its challenges: the taxi industry was…

Given Majola given.majola@inl.co.za SOUTH Africa’s recent massive fuel hike that sees motorists paying close to R20 per litre at the petrol pump from this month meant that financial service companies like Mastercard and Visa will simply get increased returns on their profits due to the linked expenses as a percentage of pump price, according to fuel retailers. The Fuel Retailers Association (FRA) chief executive Reggie Sibiya said on Friday that the payment platforms would gain more profits without breaking any sweat, but by extracting more from the fuel margin allocation. “The SA Reserve Bank (Sarb) has just announced their intention not to review these payment cards interchange fees knowing very well how fuel purchases linked to cards compromise retailer margins,” Sibiya said. The association of service station owners noted with…