Leon’s plunge from half a billion to just R6.8m

LEON Kirkinis presided over an immense destruction of value at African Bank before he quit on Wednesday. His own personal wealth also took a beating.

The 54-year-old accountant and former merchant banker, who was at African Bank for 23 years, repeatedly offered to quit in recent months as the bank stumbled from bad to worse.

Every time, African Bank's board led by Mutle Mogase refused, until finally this week, they realised the game was up.

“You can’t be emotional about this. Given where the business was, it didn’t make sense for him to continue,” said one African Bank insider, who asked not to be named.

This left Kirkinis out of a job as the plunge in the bank’s share price left him massively out of pocket. At last count, he owned 1.47% of the bank which he helped build — 22-million shares, according to a recent prospectus issued by the bank.

In March last year, his personal investment in the bank was worth more than R500-million with the share price at about R30. But it began to fall when the extent of the bad debt tumbled out, and the bank had to issue new shares.

On Friday, the share price fall to a record low of 31c, slashing his investment to a comparatively minuscule R6.8-million.

Like the other investors, Kirkinis saw his investment in the microlender take a 98% knock.

And it’s not as if he had been racking up a huge salary and bonuses along the way to keep him warm during the winter of unemployment.

For the past two years, Kirkinis was paid only R2.1-million a year — forfeiting a bonus each year.

For all the talk that executives make out like bandits whatever the fate of their companies, Kirkinis’s bank balance tells a different story.