NEWS ANALYSIS: Steinhoff hearing to keep chipping away despite firm’s arsenal
By the end of the second day of the parliamentary review of the collapse of Steinhoff one thing was clear: the forum shopping that resulted in the company being registered in Holland, having its primary listing in Frankfurt, a secondary listing in Johannesburg and its operational head office in Stellenbosch was making it extremely difficult to work out precisely what had happened and who is to blame. Tiptoeing through a variety of regulatory jurisdictions will also make it extremely difficult for any one regulator to pin down contraventions. This may have been part of the reason for the forum shopping. That the implications for regulatory oversight did not set off alarm bells among South African shareholders may have something to do with their determination to be invested in an international company at almost any cost. South Africans will never know who those investors were. Unlike the South African Companies Act, the Dutch Companies Act does not allow for disclosure of shareholders...
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