RMB has tried to sanitise Shoprite’s R1.7bn cash payout to former CEO Whitey Basson with a "fair" opinion, which may be just enough to persuade lemming-like shareholders to vote it through. But they must know it makes absolutely no sense for Shoprite shareholders to support the special resolution needed to make the payment.Without doubt, Basson is the best retailer this country has seen in decades; also without doubt, he should get almost all the credit for building Shoprite into the powerhouse it is today. If he was halfway through his career and Christo Wiese was trying to persuade him to remain with Shoprite, the R1.7bn payment might make sense. But the fact is Basson has retired, he is never going back to Shoprite, so the R1.7bn is nothing more than an enormously generous thank you. How can any institutional fund manager with duties to possibly millions of employees and pensioners justify this sort of generosity? Even if Shoprite did have huge amounts of cash lying around and ev...
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