If the JSE were a chessboard, this fortnight’s ledgers would show major pieces shifting. Barloworld is off the board, Canal+ is cornering the African screen and Premier is trading pawns for kings in food manufacturing.
The biggest domestic matter is Barloworld’s march towards private ownership. Newco, the consortium that launched the standby offer earlier this year, has driven acceptances high enough that its beneficial interest climbed into the 60s, with related parties taking the group’s effective control well beyond the simple majority mark. The offer has been treated as wholly unconditional, and the Takeover Regulation Panel’s intervention on price did not derail settlement. The upshot is that Newco has largely succeeded in its objective of taking an iconic industrial distributor out of the public glare.
Canal+’s mandatory offer for MultiChoice has closed, giving the French broadcaster about 94.4% control — enough to trigger a compulsory squeeze-out and delisting at R125 a share. The group plans to fold MultiChoice into its global operations, completing a takeover more than a year in the making.
A domestic consolidation story with a different flavour landed in fast-moving consumer goods: Premier Group’s intention to acquire RFG Holdings by way of a scheme of arrangement, offering one Premier share for every seven RFG shares, is framed as a strategic combination that will leave former RFG shareholders with an equity stake in a larger Premier. The exchange ratio is based on reference prices that imply a material premium to RFG’s trading levels.
In London-listed Bytes Technology Group, two items are worth flagging. Coronation pushed its disclosed voting rights higher, to just over 23%, signalling a serious South African asset manager’s conviction in the company’s business model, which is focused on IT infrastructure, cloud services and cybersecurity. At the same time, JPMorgan disclosed that it holds about 5% of Bytes through financial instruments, mainly cash-settled equity swaps.
Director buying at an insurer is a straightforward signal of confidence in underlying underwriting profitability and capital return prospects, and markets usually reward such visible skin in the game
Both Coronation and large passive managers are fiddling with stakes in the global paper and packaging players. Mondi saw incremental moves in voting stakes from big managers; BlackRock nudged its total interest up to about 7.8%. Coronation inched slightly higher to 9%, cementing its place as one of Mondi’s largest long-term holders. Barclays, meanwhile, dropped below the reportable threshold, trimming its combined exposure from 5.21%. Sappi attracted a fresh material disclosure that Coronation clients now hold just over 5% of the stock.
As regards insider sales and purchases, Italtile director and former CEO Jan Potgieter disclosed a sequence of sizeable disposals across several days, moving hundreds of thousands of shares at around R9.9m. Directors sell for many reasons, but in retail and building materials sectors, which are sensitive to housing cycles and consumer confidence, a director disposal can also be interpreted as portfolio rebalancing, perhaps after a period of outperformance.
Cobus Loots’s vehicle, LTS Ventures, sold two portions of 100,000 Pan African Resources shares for about R4.44m. Mining executives often use separate vehicles to manage long-run shareholding concentration and to free up capital.
At OUTsurance, director James Teeger’s on-market buys totalled 44,300 shares over the period, in addition to small purchases by an associate. Director buying at an insurer is a straightforward signal of confidence in underlying underwriting profitability and capital return prospects, and markets usually reward such visible skin in the game.
