R50m exec who couldn’t do his job

Finally. The man who must have known what skulduggery was afoot at the world’s second-largest furniture retailer, Steinhoff, was given the boot this week. Or, in corporate speak, “stepped down”. La Grange, who until Thursday was Steinhoff’s chief financial officer, has been sent into the wilderness “to focus on the preservation and procurement of liquidity in the group”. Is that a real job? Well, perhaps it might be in the case of Steinhoff, as it desperately needs a lifeline. But would you ask the person who helped to construct the house of cards that came crashing down in December to take on this task? Especially given that — with a R50.2-million pay cheque in the 2017 financial year — he couldn’t do his job. La Grange couldn’t even take the simple step of consulting the company’s own code of conduct, which states that “no employee may engage in any act involving fraud, corruption, moneylaundering, dishonesty or deception”. We guess this Mampara never got that memo.