FOOTNOTES
HILARY JOFFE: Interventionist deal maker Patel would do well at the head of a merged ministry
Bright and early in January as many as 25 deals have the go-ahead, and Ebrahim Patel’s hand is evident in several of these
The JSE can look forward to a big new primary listing some time after March 2018 when Old Mutual Ltd, the Johannesburg-based emerging markets business that will come out of the break-up of London-based Old Mutual, comes to market. But first SA’s competition authorities have to give their approval to the creation of Old Mutual Ltd, which is why it came before the Competition Tribunal on Wednesday. It’s one of the quirks of SA’s competition regime that even a corporate restructuring such as Old Mutual’s needs approval in terms of the merger control provisions of the Competition Act. But what helped to make the process even more interesting was another quirk of SA’s competition regime — the increasing focus on public interest issues, with Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel intervening actively to extract public interest undertakings from the companies involved. These days, doing a large deal in SA generally requires going to Pretoria to negotiate terms with Patel, who is entit...
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