Wiese puts squeeze on Steinhoff

Sues troubled group for R59bn

ECONOMISTS believe Christo Wiese’s audacious R59 billion lawsuit against Steinhoff is a bid to get as much as he can get back despite more troubles for the company.

Iraj Abedian of Pan African Capital and chief economist at economist.co.za Mike Schussler said yesterday that Steinhoff would not able to recover from the crisis.

This week Wiese announced that he was suing the company for R59 billion.

He made huge investments in the company three years ago and in 2016.

Steinhoff said it was unable to quantify the claims made against it by those suing it.

Steinhoff, which has several companies under it including Pepkor, Mattress Firm in the US, Conforama in France and Poundland in the UK, has been financially bleeding since December after it was announced that irregularities had been uncovered.

Current chairperson Heather Sonn confirmed at the annual general meeting in the Netherlands last Friday that there were overstatements and irregularities, and investigations were ongoing by PriceWaterhouseCoopers.

Abedian said it was clear that Wiese wanted to get back as much as he could. He was one of the investors severely hit by the collapse of Steinhoff.

“It’s clear that Wiese has decided that Steinhoff is not going to recover. He is trying to get his money back while there are some assets left. With all the shenanigans that (former chief executive) Markus Jooste has done to the business, Wiese has decided to recover the money,” said Abedian.

However, Abedian said no one was in the clear about the true value of the assets of Steinhoff.

He said he was unsure how long the lawsuit might take because German law would have to apply since the company was registered in Germany and the Netherlands.

Schussler said there were several companies under Steinhoff.

However, he did not believe Steinhoff as a business would survive, but the companies under it would.

Steinhoff would be forced to sell some of its assets to deal with the claims.

The company has sold some of its businesses in the past few months to strengthen its balance sheet and to deal with the debt.

A few months ago Steinhoff sold its shares in PSG Group and KAP Industrial and raised $1.2 billion.

It also emerged two weeks ago that Steinhoff wanted to sell its subsidiary Steinhoff Africa Retail to raise R4bn.

Steinhoff owns a 77% stake in Steinhoff Africa Retail, worth R50bn, and they want to reduce it to 71% by selling 6% of the stake.