NATIONAL Empowerment Fund (NEF) chairman Rakesh Garach appears to be a frontrunner in the impending black empowerment deal with niche bank Sasfin.Last week, Garach confirmed that he had held discussions with banking group Sasfin Holdings about the BEE deal.Though people close to the deal suggested that the state-owned NEF may play some role in the financing structure of the deal, Garach said this week that the NEF “has nothing to do with it”.Roland Sassoon, Sasfin’s CEO, also confirmed this week that Garach was “one of the interested parties” that his company has been in talks with.Sassoon said his group has a narrow list of parties it is talking to. “It is progressing nicely” he said.Quite how the deal will be financed remains unclear.Contacted this week, the state-owned Public Investment Corporation said that “at the moment, the PIC is not involved in this deal”.Sassoon said Sasfin was in “a sensitive stage of its prospective BEE deal”, so he couldn’t comment on any of the specifi...
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