In a letter forwarded to Business Day yesterday, the group also demanded that the Bank’s board not discuss the issue of nationalisation without obtaining a mandate from them in a referendum.
The letter said shareholders representing 12,94% of the voting rights of the Bank wanted the institution to hold an extraordinary general meeting within 60 days to discuss their issues.
These included the “deterioration” of the value of the Bank’s dividends and of the adoption by Zimbabwe of the rand as an official currency.
In a statement on its website, the Bank acknowledged it had received the letter from shareholder Mario Pretorius and would respond to it in due course. Another shareholder, German national Michael Duerr, sent the letter to local media.
The dissenting shareholders have stirred controversy at Bank annual general meetings in the past couple of years. They believe that if they force the privately owned Bank to nationalise, they could get big profits.
Ironically, the Bank made a loss of R3,52bn in the year to March last year .
It is one of only a handful of central banks in the world that have private shareholders.
They are entitled to appoint half of its board of directors, but have no say in its daily operations or policies. Their dividend has been fixed at 10c per share per year in terms of the South African Reserve Bank Act, dating back to 1989.
In an letter to shareholders published last month, Marcus said that the fixed dividend and limited voting rights available to shareholders underlined that the Bank was a public entity that acted in public interests.
The Bank faced “a challenge, ostensibly lacking in principle and evidently driven by the self- interested profit motive of a very small minority of shareholders,” she said.
Source: Business Day
Just read what we claim and say. We seek the truth and can´t stand the wrong and misleading statements being issued by the Bank and the Governor. We can prove every point we make. The Bank mainly tries to impress most people with their gold-embossed letterhead and empty promises.
ReplyDeleteWhere does the quote with R3.52bn loss come from? Obviously you are writing about the business year 2008/2009 ending March 31st. Get your facts right and read the annual report properly. You may find on page 126 in annotation 25.1 that the realised loss on investments was R3.52 million (not billion). Here we see again wrong reporting. By-the-way: SARB made a profit of R1 billion (yes billion) after tax (yes they paid like any other corporation R374 million in tax - see annual report page 99).
Now what do we have? A loss making government institution (this is laughable), or a profit-making private company? Who are the owners? That is the question you should follow properly.
Should you have any further queries, write me an e-mail under m@3877.com. Thanks.
Yours SARBly
Michael Duerr
SARB will report an after-tax loss of around R1billion for the financial year 2009/10
ReplyDeleteThis statement has been revealed today by the Governor herself. This loss of around 1 billion after tax has been posted by me a month ago (with my claim that 2009/2010 will be the second only loss in the 90 year history of SARB), but nobody believed it.
What a dismal performance for the new "Governess". The public should inquire about the lost proceeds for the state due to negligence and ignorance.
What lifeboats and Chinese Blow Jobs have been responsible for this loss? Was it the in ANC circles rumoured Rand Merchant Bank bail-out from August 2008 to the tune of R8 to 10 billion? There should be full transparency on monetary policy issues and the corporate governance as required by international and industry standards.
This statement of today gives us disgruntled shareholders ammunition galore to chase the Governor and the SARB Management from Basle to Pretoria and back.
Yours SARBly
Michael Duerr