Star 2021-08-19

Dineo Faku dineo.faku@inl.co.za CURRO Holdings, South Africa’s biggest private school group, is taking legal action to become a mandatory vaccinated company, it said yesterday as it placed dividends on ice and announced that enrolment had returned to pre-Covid-19 levels during the half-year ended June 2021. Speaking to shareholders during the company’s financial results presen- tation for the half-year ended June 2021 held virtually, Curro’s chief executive Andries Greyling said the decision was in the best interest of recovering from Covid-19. “We started a legal process within the legal framework of making sure that our business will be totally vaccinated within the next 12 months. I think that it is our obligation to get the world open and ensure that all our learners, parents and teachers are protected throughout the coronavirus,”…

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za GRAND Parade Investments (GPI) and US private equity fund ECP Africa Fund (ECP) yesterday appealed to the Competition Tribunal to accept revised empowerment-focused conditions for the more than R500 million sale of Burger King South Africa. This followed the Competition Commission’s unprecedented decision on June 1 this year that the sale of the US burger franchise in South Africa by GPI to ECP be prohibited, not because of any issues of competition, but because the deal would have reduced the shareholding of historically disadvantaged people. It was the first time that such a deal had been blocked by the commission on the grounds of public interest alone. Yesterday, it emerged in proceedings before the tribunal that GPI and ECP had engaged the Department of Trade,…

Siphelele Dludla siphelele.dludla@inl.co.za THE SOUTH African Reserve Bank (SARB) is expected to keep interest rates on hold next month, as headline consumer inflation softened for a second month in a row last month. Data from Statistics South Africa (StatsSA) yesterday showed that the annual rate of the Consumer Price Index edged lower to 4.6 percent year-on-year in July, from 4.9 percent in June. This was in line with market expectations and slightly above the 4.5 percent midpoint of the SARB’s inflation target range of 3 to 6 percent. Core inflation moderated to 3 percent year-on-year, from 3.2 percent in June, mainly because of the increase in water and other services inflation. Last month, the bank’s monetary policy committee said its implied policy rate path indicated an increase…

Move is reminiscent of bread cartel in historical class action lawsuit against discrimination Sizwe Dlamini and Sihle Makhowana BLACK businesses organisations have called for South Africa’s banks to be taken to the Equality Court and for a class action lawsuit against them, citing blatant discrimination towards black-owned entities. This move is reminiscent of the bread cartel that was disrupted by Tiger Brands and Pioneer Foods when it was taken to the Competition Commission in a historical class-action lawsuit that found the cartel guilty of inflating prices, and the end result was that they had to pay billions of rand to rectify the situation. Mntuwekhaya Cishe, the secre- tary-general of the Black Business Chamber (BBC), said South African banks were now in a similar situation and black businesses now wanted the…

EDWARD WEST edward.west@inl.co.za OLD MUTUAL said its sales and earnings recovered in the six months to June 30, notwithstanding a R2 billion additional provision for Covid-19 related mortality claims. The life assurance and financial services group said in a trading statement yesterday that mortality claims paid relating to Covid-19 in the group’s life businesses for the six months to June 2021 had been more than anticipated, and were driving negative Net Client Cash Flows. However, this was offset by inflows in the Asset Management and Wealth businesses. “Our mortality experience has been worse than anticipated, with impact on profits mitigated by a partial release of provisions raised at the end of 2020.” The group’s Covid-19 provisions were increased by R2bn as at June 30, 2021, to take into account…

THE PHARMACEUTICAL sector has been flagged by numerous government initiatives and workstreams as a priority sector for localisation, which means that all public sector entities that enter into procurement processes for pharmaceuticals must look to local manufacturers and prioritise their spending in South Africa. The public sector is the largest procurer of pharmaceutical products in the country, with the capacity to order in volumes that could be critical for local producers, their economies of scale and the recovery of factories. However, through a tender process that is fundamentally prejudiced against local manufacturers, the government is, in all likelihood, set to import a large amount of pharmaceuticals, if the awarding of the current tender for antiretrovirals (ARVs) goes the way Pharmisa (Pharmaceuticals made in South Africa) fears. The local pharmaceutical landscape…