Golding buys 20% stake in financial services group Vunani
CAPE TOWN — Empowerment pioneer Marcel Golding — the former chairman of Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) — is on a roll.
On Friday, Golding — via investment vehicle Geomer — took up a strategic equity stake in black-owned financial services boutique Vunani through participation in a private placement of shares for cash.
Golding paid R48m to subscribe for just more than 30million shares in Vunani at a price of 160c a share. This gives Golding an influential 20% interest in the company, which is headed by Ethan Dube.
This is the third deal Golding has clinched in a JSE-listed counter since his acrimonious departure from HCI in 2014.
Earlier in 2016 Golding — as part of a consortium arrangement with low-key investor Hugh Roberts — snapped up the largest economic shareholding in fashion retailer Rex Trueform (Rextru) and its pyramid holding company, African & Overseas Enterprises. Golding also in September pushed up his stake in construction and engineering specialist Esor to 27.95%.
Vunani chairman Lionel Jacobs welcomed Golding as a “significant and active shareholder”. Golding — via Geomer — becomes the second-largest shareholder in the company after the Vunani Group, which is controlled by the management founders of Vunani.
Dube said Golding’s investment would result in a strategic partnership and a closer alignment of interests, which would ultimately enhance the development and growth of Vunani.
He said the additional funding raised from Geomer would be deployed to take advantage of growth opportunities, as well as to optimise existing businesses.
Vunani is not well covered by the investment sector, but one small-cap analyst — who asked not to be named — suggested Vunani appeared to be on a more reassuring operational footing and could look to acquisitions to consolidate its niche positions.
“Perhaps Golding will provide a catalyst for corporate action in terms of bulking up Vunani’s various offerings. There has to be a strategic reason behind an issue of a large line of new scrip.”
Vunani straddles the fund management, asset administration, investment banking, private equity and private client services.
So far, Golding has been reluctant to elaborate on his bigger plans with Geomer. But the common denominator in Vunani, Esor and Rextru is that all three companies are overlooked in the mainstream market, and appear to offer value in relation to their share prices.
Vunani reported revenue of R154m for the 14 months to end February, with profit from continuing operations of R8.3m compared with a loss of R25.3m in the previous financial year. Basic earnings came in at 6.3c per share.
At that time, Dube said Vunani was seeing steady dealflow and promising opportunities, despite subdued market conditions.
Perhaps Golding will provide a catalyst for corporate action in terms of bulking up Vunani’s various offerings