Steinhoff International appoints 3 to its social, ethics committee

STEINHOFF International subsidiary Steinhoff Investment Holdings yesterday moved to shore up its corporate governance and damaged reputation by appointing three directors to its social and ethics committee.

The committee is separate from the existing one at its parent company, which has been struggling to rise from the ashes after it admitted to accounting irregularities in December 2017, which led to a more than 90 percent collapse in the group’s share price and wiped out more than R200 billion in market capitalisation.

Steinhoff Investment Holdings yesterday appointed Alexandra Watson, an independent non-executive director, as the chairperson of the committee.

The other two members making up the committee are Steve Booysen and Louis du Preez, the current chief executive of the troubled retailer.

Meanwhile, Louis du Preez and Theodore de Klerk, two executive directors of Steinhoff International who sat on the board of KAP Industrial Holdings, have stepped down from the board.

This follows Steinhoff’s sale of its 26 percent stake in KAP last week for R4.8bn in an accelerated book build.

The group placed the just more than 694 million KAP shares at R6.85 a share, giving it a 9.4 percent discount to KAP’s closing price.

Steinhoff sold the stake to raise funds to reduce its debt and provide its operations with working capital.

Both de Klerk and Du Preez have served as non-executive directors on the board of KAP since September 1, 2017.

The Financial Sector Conduit Authority (FSCA) this week also reported that Steinhoff would provide the necessary documents to the capital markets watchdog to enable it to investigate alleged market transgressions.

FSCA said Steinhoff had confirmed the disclosure would enable it to act against all persons implicated in the wrongdoing.

Former chief executive Markus

Jooste resigned after the reported scandal.

FSCA said that it had met with representatives of Steinhoff who agreed to provide them with all relevant documents, without waiving confidentiality agreements from the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, which Steinhoff has repeatedly refused to share in full with regulators.