Good week

It’s not often that shareholder activism pays in SA, so when it does, it’s worth an honourable mention. In recent weeks, activist has questioned how it was that Purple Group, a company worth R280m, was going to pay R2.8m to its nonexecutive chairman Mark Barnes. Facing Botha at Purple’s AGM this week, the company said the fee was “incorrectly disclosed” and was actually R500,000. Also, 7.4% of Purple investors voted against paying Barnes an extra R2m for raising R100m for Purple’s Easyequities arm.

Theo Botha