Business rescue was introduced into the Companies Act and became effective in 2011 with a view to saving and restructuring rather than liquidating companies deemed to have a reasonable chance of survival. According to a 2022 Companies and Intellectual Property Commission report, 4 370 companies entered business rescue between 2011 and June 2022, with 19% of these reaching substantial implementation of the business rescue plans. Only 546 ended up in liquidation.
Business rescue practitioners have been to court close to 90 times to fend off a slew of cases, some of them opportunistic, seeking to remove them as practitioners at Optimum or to liquidate the assets. Another former Gupta asset, Koornfontein Mines in Mpumalanga, was sold in 2019 to Makole Group’s Black Royalty Minerals and is now fully operational.