No relief for Steinhoff
THE heat is on Steinhoff International’s supervisory board as they jump from one crisis to the next since taking over in the wake of an accounting scandal in December.
On Thursday, ongoing litigation in Germany over the ownership of the Poco retail furniture group put Steinhoff in the spotlight again.
In February, the Enterprise Chamber of the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ordered Steinhoff to amend its 2016 financials after ruling it owned only half of Poco.
Steinhoff acquired Poco in 2008 and had reported owning it 100%.
The other half is owned by Dr Andreas Seifert of OM Handels and MW Handels businesses.
Steinhoff alerted shareholders that parties attended a court hearing in Dortmund on Wednesday to resolve differences and seek a
SUPERVISORY BOARD UNDER SCRUTINY SINCE TAKE-OVER,WRITES
SANDILE MCHUNU
solution. “The company is pleased to announce that, at the hearing, the parties agreed, in principle, to settle the matter on acceptable terms. To this end, it was agreed that the group would no longer contest the validity of the forfeiture of the Seifert Entities’ existing 50% interest in Poco,” Steinhoff said.
The group said Seifert Entities offered to acquire the group’s remaining interest in Poco based on an agreed equity valuation of €532.5 million (R8.06 billion) for all of the equity in Poco.
“In addition, the Poco business will retain debt of €140m, with no recourse to the group. Details of the agreement will be finalised in the coming weeks,” the group said.
A week ago, the group was grilled by shareholders and investors in an annual general meeting, which lasted for almost five hours, in the Netherlands. The supervisory board cleared that hurdle with directors who were up for nomination being retained for another term even though there was some uneasiness from some shareholders.
This was reflected when audit committee chairman Steve Booysen and Angela Krueger-steinhoff received the lowest number of votes, being retained by 56% and 59%.
The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) was cited as one shareholder who voted against, but it was tight-lipped on its vote.
Steinhoff has yet to recover from the accounting scandal that wiped out more than R200bn in market capitalisation and led to a 90% share price plunge.
Earlier this week, it sold its electronics retailer Extreme Digital for an undisclosed amount. Hungary’s Competition Authority approved the 50.4% asset disposal.
In the past few months, Steinhoff sold off some stakes to raise liquidity in the business. In mid-april, it raised R3.75bn in an accelerated bookbuild through the sale of a 5.8% stake in Steinhoff Retail Africa (Star), reducing its stake to 71.01%.
It also reduced its stake in KAP Industrial Holdings and investment group PSG by selling 450m ordinary shares in KAP last month to raise more than R3.8bn and 20.6m shares in PSG to raise R4.7bn in December.