Is Nedbank heading in a new direction?
Old Mutual steps away as controlling shareholder after more than 30 years but there’s no need for alarm, says bank CEO
Nedbank CEO Mike Brown seems remarkably relaxed about losing his controlling shareholder, Old Mutual, in the current round of corporate restructuring. Old Mutual has been Nedbank’s controlling shareholder for more than 30 years. "We will certainly incur some corporate finance costs," he says. "But there will be no impact on our operations: we run banking systems and they run insurance systems. It is not as if we had been bought by a global bank such as Standard Chartered or HSBC and then sold, in which case there would have been a lot of unscrambling." Old Mutual SA will retain a holding of about 20% to cement its commercial relationship and make it difficult for another banking group to take control. But first an SA holding company must be listed with two main assets: Nedbank and Old Mutual Emerging Markets. Old Mutual has been a strong supporter of Nedbank’s purchase of a 20% holding in Ecobank Transnational Incorporated as the springboard into West Africa — not least as Old Mutua...
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