Bid to repair leaky PIC
A private member’s bill wants to inject more transparency into the way Africa’s largest investment manager makes its investments
Ivan Fredericks, general manager of the Public Servants Association (PSA), may just have put his finger on it. Hours after receiving what must have been boxes of documents from Steinhoff, Fredericks told reporters that the minutes of high-level meetings that were in those boxes showed that the state-owned pension manager, the Public Investment Corp (PIC), had never been represented on the board of the retailer. That’s not surprising, as the PIC often isn’t represented on boards. What is surprising is that it was only on December 14, more than a week after the retailer admitted to "accounting irregularities" and its stock collapsed, that the PIC demanded representation. As the second-largest shareholder with 8.4%, the PIC should have made this demand much earlier. Of course, there were powerful personalities on the Steinhoff board, so perhaps two PIC appointees would have made no difference. But perhaps they would have. Even in companies where the PIC has had board representation, it...
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