PIC forced BEE investors to share the spoils in Total SA deal, inquiry told
Entities seeking funding had to include parties nominated by the corporation, executive testifies
A BEE company that sought to borrow money from the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) to buy a stake in Total SA was coerced into merging with another consortium at the instruction of the state-owned asset manager. This was the testimony to the inquiry into the fund manager of Lawrence Muluadzi, a director of Kilimanjaro Capital (KiliCap), which was attempting to buy the BEE stake in Total SA in 2015. Mulaudzi says KiliCap submitted a binding offer to buy the Total stake in July 2015 that included an unconditional undertaking from the PIC to provide the R1.7bn in funding. But Mulaudzi later learnt that his company was not the only bidder that the PIC was backing. “As Kilicap we found this to be strange because the PIC had signed a binding engagement letter with us which in our view implied exclusivity,” he said. The agreement with the PIC included a commitment fee of R38m, the amount Kilicap would have been liable to pay to the corporation if it walked away from the deal. Mulaudzi ...
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