BELAMANTSTYLE
ROB ROSE: Belamant: Breaking Bad
New rules are needed to give shareholders the right to reject a golden handshake that has been granted by a weak board
What kind of a board of directors lavishes R90m on a CEO as a quid pro quo for a "co-operative resignation" just to get him to leave the building? That of Net1, of course: the odious company that scored a government tender under murky circumstances in 2012 to handle the payments to 17m indigent South Africans — and promptly saw this as an opportunity to flog them airtime and microloans. Last week, it emerged that Net1’s investors had finally had enough of Serge Belamant, the brash Frenchman who founded the firm 27 years ago. Contributing factors: a perpetual cloud over the company, criminal investigations, an empowerment deal of smoke and mirrors and allegations of ripping off the country’s most vulnerable. So by mutual agreement, the 63-year-old Belamant took early retirement. Shareholders, led by the World Bank’s Infrastructure Finance Company (IFC) and Allan Gray, must have lit up a metaphorical cigar and slapped each other on the back for outmanoeuvring Belamant.But while he mig...
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