According to Wiese, while Jooste said back in 2011 that he was merely representing a consortium of third-party investors, it was now clear that he was behind the deal from the start.
The first argument put forward was that the terms of the sale contract meant Weise couldn't seek to have it cancelled. The defendants' second argument was that the sale couldn’t be reversed as Steinhoff's shares had fallen precipitously in value. Again Binns-Ward was unimpressed, ruling that Wiese could return any shares in Steinhoff as long as they were in the same class as the shares he had received.