HUGE HALTS CELL C TERMINATION

LISTED diversified investment holdings company Huge Group and telecoms firm Cell C were yesterday forced to go back to the negotiation table after Huge Group won an interdict in a legal dispute between two of its subsidiaries and Cell C. It will see Cell C prevented from terminating its services as planned at the end of this month. In a statement Huge said the company was pleased that the court had upheld the application by its subsidiary companies in the litigation. “The litigation took the form of an urgent application to interdict Cell C from, among others, terminating the subsidiary companies’ access to the Cell C mobile telephone network,” Huge said. The group had argued that its subsidiaries Huge Cellular and Huge Telecom were entitled to urgent relief against Cell C to prevent it from suspending services at the end of this month that could cut off telephone services to 16 000 Huge clients. Huge has also argued that Cell

C is obliged by law to provide it with an accumulated number of minutes following the termination of the contract – up until February 2022. Cell C said: “The judge ordered that the parties take the matter to arbitration, which we will do.” Cell C, which is struggling to shrug off its debt pile, found itself with its back against the wall in recent times. In the surprise announcement last Friday, Cell C said its chief executive, Jose Dos Santos, would step down next month. This as the operator’s biggest shareholder, Blue Label Telecoms, said the Buffet Consortium, backed by billionaire Jonathan Beare, would become a minority shareholder in the mobile operator.