Fresh merger talk on Steinhoff Africa move
Markus Jooste says African assets should be listed independently
The botched deal between Steinhoff and Shoprite will go down in history as the biggest African retail merger that never happened. And if Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste has his way, any plans for a sequel will be put on ice. In December last year, Shoprite and Steinhoff announced plans to merge their retail operations. But less than three months later the deal had fallen through, as minority shareholders believed it would benefit only the group's largest shareholders - the Public Investment Corporation and Titan Investment Holdings, owned by Christo Wiese. Just two months later Steinhoff announced its intention to separately list its African retail operations on the JSE. In an interview this week, Jooste said one reason for the collapse of the Shoprite deal was because "we [Steinhoff] didn't see the opportunity that we were offered in December. We were approached by two of our biggest shareholders to have a look whether it makes sense to put our African businesses into Shoprite. "We had...
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