ANN CROTTY: Floyd Shivambu raises valid Steinhoff points
A one-off tax may generate goodwill for fund managers
One of the star performers at a recent parliamentary briefing on Steinhoff was the EFF’s Floyd Shivambu. Like most of his parliamentary colleagues, he wasn’t one bit impressed by Steinhoff directors’ claims that they didn’t see what was coming, or by the various regulators’ efforts to distance themselves from responsibility. But what seemed to particularly irk him was what he described as national treasury and the Reserve Bank’s attempts to trivialise the size of institutional fund managers’ losses. In a phlegmatic attempt to reassure South Africans that their pension funds are safe, these august organisations had pointed out that private pension funds reported average exposure to Steinhoff of just 0.92% of their funds. The Financial Services Board added a bit more detail, revealing that the R18bn wiped out from December 1-8 represented 1% of the total assets of the private sector funds, excluding that of the Public Investment Corp (PIC). Then the PIC explained that the R25bn reduct...
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