Mass board walkout rocks Group Five
Resignations follow a breakdown in talks with investment firm Allan Gray, its biggest shareholder
Five board members of one of South Africa's largest construction firms, Group Five, plan to resign ahead of the ailing firm's extraordinary general meeting next month, following a breakdown in talks with investment firm Allan Gray, its biggest shareholder. The planned mass resignations of nonexecutive directors Philisiwe Mthethwa, Kalaa Mpinga, Willem Louw, Justin Chinyanta and Vincent Rague come after CEO Eric Vemer left in February. Allan Gray, which owns about 23% of Group Five, has subsequently pushed for an overhaul of the board with its own five new candidates, saying it had lost faith in the current board, chaired by Mthethwa. At the dispute's centre, say sources, is the fund manager's insistence that Group Five's most profitable unit — the investments and concessions business - be unbundled and sold off to a local private equity firm. At the start of the year, a private equity firm expressed interest in buying the unit, which operates tolls on the continent and in Europe, wi...
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