SA will pay a high price for the ANC’s populist move on the Reserve Bank
The only winners from the clumsy and ill-advised call to nationalise the Bank will be the scrum of lawyers, lining up to profit from the decision
The Reserve Bank has warned that attempts to nationalise it by buying out its private shareholders will be a cosmetic, but costly exercise. Just how costly hinges on the value placed on the Bank’s shares, which could range from R1.55 to R4,700 each, depending on the measurement used. The ANC’s move to nationalise the Bank could present a windfall for the Bank’s 759 private shareholders, 116 of whom hold the maximum allotted 10,000 shares per person. Anticipating this, the ruling party resolved at its December conference that the Bank must be nationalised in a way that will "not benefit private sector speculators". Of the 116 significant private shareholders, two reside in Norway, two in Australia and five in Germany, including the troublesome Michael Duerr, a German national who butted heads with successive Bank governors since he started accumulating the Bank’s shares in 2006. At one point the Duerr family held 90,000 Bank shares (4.5% of its issued share capital). In 2010, the Ban...
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