A bad week for Henry Laas

A good week for Sim Tshabalala

If you’ve had your faith sorely tested in South Africa Inc stocks by the market rout of the past three months, Standard Bank’s chipper update — which has driven a 10.5% rally in its shares over the past week alone — should have you feeling a little more frisky about life. It’s not clear yet whether CEO Sim Tshabalala and his crew are releasing more of the money kept back for Covid-related bad debt provisions to smooth out profits, but the group reported a 42% rise in earnings for the nine months ended September, thanks in part to higher loans, higher interest rates and higher fees. A winning trifecta.

A bad week for Henry Laas

Murray & Roberts CEO Henry Laas has endured a completely different week as long-suffering shareholders — himself included — saw the value of their holdings evaporate 32% in one day. You’d be forgiven a strangled cry of despair, given that everything appeared to be going almost swimmingly according to the company’s last set of results, released less than two months ago. It’s a wonder that Covid-related disruptions took this long to really sink in. But the yawning hole in its cash balance looks that much worse, considering that this management team spurned the “opportunistic” advances of enthusiastic German suitor Aton — and its R15 a share offer — four years ago. At this week’s price of R4.17, that bid would have been generous in the extreme.