AEEI tumbles amid call for JSE to suspend its shares

The market value of Sekunjalo’s JSE-listed investment vehicle, African Equity Empowerment Investments (AEEI), fell by a quarter last week amid a call for the stock to be suspended. In early February, the Sunday Times published an audio recording of a meeting in which Sekunjalo chair Iqbal Surve said he was withholding information from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) about why a transaction between companies under his control had fallen through. The PIC controversially invested R4.3bn in Ayo Technology Solutions in December 2017, partly on the premise that Ayo would then use R1bn of that cash to buy AEEI’s 30% stake in British Telecom’s (BT’s) SA business. Ayo is 49.4% owned by AEEI, which in turn is 61.5% held by Surve’s Sekunjalo. The deal was never completed, however, as BT did not consent to it. At the secretly recorded meeting in August 2018, Surve said he had spoken to former PIC boss Dan Matjila about why the BT deal had collapsed, but that he had not given “100% of th...