Board walkout at PIC risks investments

A deepening crisis at South Africa’s biggest money manager is threatening to cast a pall over the economy and throw into doubt potential deals, including the bailout of one of the nation’s largest clothing retailers.

Nine Public Investment directors quit on Friday, saying the institution overseeing the pension funds of most South African civil servants has entered a “state of paralysis” following misconduct claims against some board members. Those included questionable investments in the bonds of cash-strapped state power producer Eskom and the purchase of shares in an overvalued and a little-known technology company.

Read: PIC board quits as scandals mount

The state-owned money manager is typically front and centre of major domestic investments in South Africa, including rescue talks to help debt-laden retailer Edcon stay afloat in a depressed consumer environment and stagnant economy. Finance minister Tito Mboweni has started the process to appoint a new board, a spokesman said on Monday. The board has said it will stay on until new directors have been appointed.

“The PIC is central to South Africa’s economy,” Patrick Mathidi, head of equities at Aluwani Capital Partners, said by phone from Johannesburg. “The whole situation at the PIC is a concern.”

Political interference

The PIC’s chairman has historically been the country’s deputy finance minister, in this case Mondli Gungubele, one of those who resigned on Friday. That’s raised the question of how much political influence affects decisions, such as to invest in Eskom, which has long been a financial headache for the National Treasury.

A former PIC board member last week told a commission of inquiry that the money manager would be better off without ministers on the board, while a representative of a local pensioners group said the PIC has “no mandate to invest in politically driven investments that yield no returns.”

Fears that South African lawmakers have had too much influence have reared their head in the past, notably when PIC bought a state-owned stake in wireless carrier Vodacom Group at a discount, so the government could fund Eskom. But not all the fund manager’s controversies have been overtly political. Former chief executive officer Dan Matjila allegedly used his position at PIC to support a business owned by a romantic partner, an accusation he’s denied.

Criminal activity

“Pension money is sacrosanct — you don’t gamble with it and once you start fiddling around with that for personal or political gain, it’s criminal,” said David Shapiro of Sasfin in Johannesburg, who has been trading stocks in the city since 1972. “A board is vital in order to have some oversight and to ensure bad practices don’t continue.”

Other than Edcon, recent deals led by or involving the PIC include the acquisition of a majority stake in Karan Beef, the world’s biggest single-site feedlot. The money manager also built a stake last year in engineer Murray & Roberts, helping to thwart a takeover attempt by Germany’s Helmig family, and was pivotal in fighting off a Chilean pursuer of South African drugs company Adcock Ingram in 2014.

In the past year, half of the PIC’s executive committee have been suspended or resigned, including Matjila. The Pretoria-based money manager oversees more than R2 trillion in assets with investments that make up about 13% of the market capitalisation of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, according to its website.

Not all investment decisions will be immediately affected by the board’s walkout. Depending on their size, some are signed off by managers or the investment committee, the inquiry heard in the past two weeks.

Even so, it “gives great comfort to all stakeholders when all key governance structures are in operation to provide oversight to executives,” which isn’t happening, Mathidi said.

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