THE GHOST TRAIN
THE FINANCE GHOST: When the balance sheet breaks
Tongaat is another cautionary tale to investors in any overindebted company — and there are more than a few red flags to look out for
Business rescue: two words that no equity investor wants to read. To be fair, creditors don’t want to see it happen either. The biggest winner in this process is usually the business rescue practitioner. If things go well, the staff (or most of them) hang onto their jobs and the business doesn’t disappear from the market altogether.
The latest example is Tongaat Hulett, the embattled sugar company that has been a victim of alleged accounting misstatements, a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic (touch wood) and a province that appears to have angered all the gods, ancestors and, quite frankly, every mysterious being you can think of. The KwaZulu-Natal economy has suffered huge setbacks in the past couple of years and Tongaat Hulett is headquartered in the region with most of its operations there...
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