SacOil relisting seen as key recovery step

OIL explorer SacOil yesterday resumed trading on the JSE and London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), as new management pushes ahead with its turnaround plan.

Its shares closed 1c, or 3.7%, lower at 26c with nearly 3-million shares worth R758,578 trading.

SacOil requested suspension of trading in its shares on May 31 when then-CEO Robin Vela and two nonexecutive directors resigned, leaving Gontse Moseneke as the company’s sole director.

In a statement yesterday, it said that it had fulfilled all of the conditions that entailed reconstitution of its board of directors and had formed an audit-risk committee, as part of the listing requirements on the JSE and AIM.

SacOil’s board of directors is made up of high-profile South African names, with former Reserve Bank governor Tito Mboweni as chairman‚ former head of the National Prosecuting Authority Vusi Pikoli and former ambassador to Algeria and deputy director-general of the National Intelligence Agency, Mzuvukile Maqetuka, as nonexecutive directors.

They were joined by Public Investment Corporation’s (PIC’s) nonexecutive director Ignatius Sehoole, and Stephanus Muller from Amalgamated Appliances. “The relisting in SacOil is the most important step in the recovery in the company,” new CEO Roger Rees said yesterday.

On the cards is a recapitalisation programme of R800m that includes converting the R330m debt owed to Nigerian infrastructure and manufacturing firm Gairloch into equity‚ as well as conduct a R570m rights offer underwritten by the PIC.

Shareholders are set to put the recapitalisation proposal to a vote in December, Mr Rees said.

In an interview with Business Day last month, Mr Rees said the company aimed to have a strong debt-free balance sheet with which it would be able to pursue the development of its existing assets, which is the primary focus.