{"id":267343,"date":"2018-08-27T08:13:36","date_gmt":"2018-08-27T06:13:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=267343"},"modified":"2018-08-27T08:13:36","modified_gmt":"2018-08-27T06:13:36","slug":"south-africas-next-big-bank-could-be-on-its-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/267343\/south-africas-next-big-bank-could-be-on-its-way\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa&#8217;s next big bank could be on its way"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The National Treasury has published the Financial Matters Bill for <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.treasury.gov.za\/legislation\/draft_bills\/default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">public\u00a0comment<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Among other changes, the bill is seeking to amend the Banks Act to allow for <strong>qualifying state-owned companies <\/strong>to apply for banking licenses.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Under the Companies Act (2008), state-owned companies are no longer classified as public companies,&#8221; it explains.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Currently, the Banks Act only allows for public companies to establish a bank. As a result, state-owned companies meeting the prudential and other requirements of the Banks Act, are unable to apply for authorisation to establish a bank.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The legislation acknowledges that because these banks are backed by the government, they may be open to abuse as whey would be able to continue to\u00a0operate despite not being a going concern.<\/p>\n<p>To combat this, the new bill proposes that only qualifying state-owned companies that are &#8216;financially sound&#8217; may apply for authorisation to establish a bank.<\/p>\n<p>For this purpose, the bill proposes that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A state-owned company must first obtain the approval of the minister of finance, acting with the concurrence of the minister responsible for the state-owned company, to apply for authorisation to establish a bank; and<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The assets of the company, its holding company and, if applicable, the holding company of its holding company, must exceed its liabilities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Reserve Bank<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The publication of the\u00a0Financial Matters Bill follows recent plans to nationalise the South African Reserve Bank (SARB).<\/p>\n<p>Addressing,\u00a0the 98th <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/government\/261475\/big-money-to-be-made-at-taxpayers-expense-if-sa-nationalises-the-reserve-bank-kganyago\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ordinary general meeting<\/a><\/strong> of SARB shareholders at the end of July,\u00a0Governor of the SARB,\u00a0Lesetja Kganyago, admitted that there was no strong argument, in principle, in favour of retaining private shareholders.<\/p>\n<p>However, he cautioned that nationalising\u00a0the SARB could end up being both a costly and messy process.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are concerned that the process could be expensive, as the shares trade for far less than what some existing shareholders are prepared to sell their shares for,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Indeed, it is the case that a group of shareholders is agitating for the SARB\u2019s nationalisation as they believe that they are entitled to a share of the assets of the SARB and see this as an opportunity to make enormous profits at the expense of taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This could turn out to be a protracted legal process and a very expensive exercise for what would, at best, be a cosmetic gain.&#8221;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/266431\/this-is-how-many-customers-are-joining-capitec-every-month\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">This is how many customers are joining Capitec every month<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The National Treasury has published the Financial Matters Bill for public\u00a0comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":260439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-267343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267343"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":267387,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267343\/revisions\/267387"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/260439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}