CHOPPIES CHIEF CONFIDENT HE WILL FIND VINDICATION

THE SUSPENDED chief executive of Botswana supermarket chain Choppies says he is disappointed by the board’s decision to suspend him and is confident he will be vindicated of any wrongdoing. In a statement late on Wednesday, Ramachandran Ottapathu said the suspension announced on Tuesday was the consequence of personal differences with some members of the board. Choppies, which also has stores in Zimbabwe and South Africa and has a second listing on the Johannesburg stock exchange, did not say why it suspended Ottapathu. Trading in Choppies’ shares is currently suspended on both the Botswana and Johannesburg stock exchanges after auditors refused to sign the company financial statements until investigations were completed. In his statement, Ottapathu, a joint founder and major shareholder of Choppies, said he remained committed to getting the business back to where it should be for the benefit of shareholders, staff, creditors and the business community in all the countries where it operated. | African News Agency (ANA) KENYA’S Safaricom will start a joint venture with Vodacom to acquire the intellectual property rights to the popular M-Pesa mobile financial services platform from Britain’s Vodafone, Safaricom’s chief executive said yesterday. The

€12 million (R192.53m) deal would let both purchasers make significant savings in royalties paid to Vodafone and expand the service to new African markets, said Bob Collymore, Safaricom’s chief executive. “We are taking ownership of M-Pesa, the brand and the intellectual property. (There will be) joint ownership between us and Vodacom and we will then use that as a platform in running into other markets across the continent,” Collymore said in an interview. Safaricom, the most profitable company in East Africa, pays 2 percent of its annual M-Pesa revenue to Vodafone. Revenue from M-Pesa stood at 75 billion shillings (R10.65bn) in Safaricom’s financial year to the end of March. Vodacom, a South African operator which owns 35 percent of Safaricom, pays 5 percent in an intellectual property fee to Vodafone from its M-Pesa business, which is mainly in Tanzania. | Reuters