{"id":271023,"date":"2018-09-12T11:04:02","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T09:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=271023"},"modified":"2018-09-12T11:04:02","modified_gmt":"2018-09-12T09:04:02","slug":"nigeria-double-blow-sends-mtn-shares-crashing-to-the-lowest-point-in-12-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/271023\/nigeria-double-blow-sends-mtn-shares-crashing-to-the-lowest-point-in-12-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria double-blow sends MTN shares crashing to the lowest point in 12 years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mobile group MTN continued to take pain on Wednesday (12 September), as its share price dropped a further 2.9% to trade under R70 a share – its lowest point since October 2006.<\/p>\n

The operator is under immense stress after Nigerian authorities demanded the group pay back over $10 billion \u00a0– $8.1 billion in alleged aunathorised dividend expatriation, and a further $2 billion fine related to back-taxes.<\/p>\n

MTN has denied both claims.<\/p>\n

At the start of September, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) alleged improper dividend repatriations by MTN Nigeria and requested that $8.1 billion be returned “to the coffers of the CBN”, which sent the mobile operator’s share price crashing 20% at the time. The share was trading around R107 a share before the crash.<\/p>\n

The CNB accused MTN and lenders of “flagrantly violating foreign-exchange violations” in taking cash out of the country over eight years through 2015.<\/p>\n

MTN’s woes were then exacerbated a week later, when the\u00a0Nigerian Attorney General (AG) said an assessment of tax compliance found that MTN Nigeria should have paid approximately $2.0 billion in taxes relating to the importation of foreign equipment and payments to foreign suppliers over the last 10 years.<\/p>\n

This announcement sent MTN’s shares crashing yet again.<\/p>\n

MTN has since applied to the Federal High Court of Nigeria for \u2018injunctive relief\u2019 to protect its assets from the CBN and the Attorney General.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday (12 September), MTN accused the the Attorney General of overreaching with the back-taxes claim, saying that he “ought not to have undertaken an unauthorised process which has caused undue, unwarranted and untold injury to” the company\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

According to reports, MTN is now seeking 2 billion naira ($5.5 million) in damages and a further 1 billion naira in legal costs.<\/p>\n

At 11h00, the MTN share price was at R69.95 a share. The group\u2019s share price is down 47% from R133 at the start of the year, giving it a market cap of R131 billion – which is smaller than the Nigerian fines combined (R152 billion).<\/p>\n

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Read:\u00a0MTN says Nigerian authorities have \u2018overreached\u2019<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mobile group MTN continued to take pain on Wednesday, as its share price dropped a further 2.9% to trade under R70 a share – its lowest point since October 2006.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":109695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[26,28],"class_list":["post-271023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-headline","tag-mtn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271023","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=271023"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":271027,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271023\/revisions\/271027"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}