ON THE MONEY
STUART THEOBALD: JSE seeks to amend listing rules to avoid another Steinhoff, EOH or Ayo debacle
The local bourse also intends to start publishing monthly reports on instances of suspicious trades it has referred to the Financial Sector Conduct Authority for investigation
Perhaps it is because SA’s financial services industry almost shuts down in December that so much can go wrong. Last December three major events shook investor faith in the JSE. Most prominent was Steinhoff’s revelations of serious accounting misconduct, triggering a collapse in its share price. The second was the share-price tailspin of IT company EOH. Third was the listing of Ayo Technology Solutions. Those all took place within weeks and each gave investors a rude shock. Now the JSE wants to amend its listing rules to make recurrences less likely. Steinhoff’s complex global structure seemingly allowed it to skirt around regulators and apparently its own board. It used its multiple jurisdictions to create entities that could help massage the financial reporting. Because Steinhoff had only a secondary listing on the JSE, the JSE had far less oversight than over primary listings. EOH revealed another problem, though it was frankly one we have known about since 2009 when similar prob...
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