If the Public Investment Corporation manages all of its assets the way it manages its investment in Independent Media and its loan to Sekunjalo Independent Media , perhaps the Government Employees Pension Fund should be worried.
This means the PIC has no, or very little, independent insight into what is happening at the ailing firm. This is hardly what one would expect of the custodian of the country’s biggest pension fund. When a loan is not serviced it is standard practice for the holder of the loan to move swiftly to secure the assets used to back that loan. This is to ensure the quality of the assets does not deteriorate further.The loan in question dates back to
SIM did not service its debt and by the end of September 2018, after interest, owed the PIC R1.35-billion, according to evidence provided at the Mpati inquiry into the PIC.Had the PIC acted sooner, it may have had a better chance of restoring Independent to profitability, or of selling it to a third party for cash.
In March 2018, when the Sagarmatha pre-listing statement was issued, selected investors were invited to subscribe for a “private placement” of shares ahead of the planned listing of the firm on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.theorised that the private placement was engineered to allow the PIC to come to the rescue with more government pensioners’ cash. The PIC would not confirm or deny whether it would take up any of the shares on offer, according to the article.