{"id":828102,"date":"2025-06-13T09:43:36","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T07:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=828102"},"modified":"2025-06-13T09:43:41","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T07:43:41","slug":"owner-of-south-africas-biggest-shopping-mall-enters-business-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/828102\/owner-of-south-africas-biggest-shopping-mall-enters-business-rescue\/","title":{"rendered":"Owner of South Africa’s biggest shopping mall enters business rescue"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Azrapart, the co-owner of Fourways Mall, has been placed under business rescue by the Free State High Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azrapart owns 50% of Fourways Mall alongside Accelerate Property Fund. The company has one director, Michael Georgiou, who is also a non-executive director and former CEO of Accelerate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The High Court has ruled that the company should be placed into business rescue following an application from creditors Investec and RMB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court had already delivered a judgment in March 2025, noting that the total amount owed to the applicants was R2.3 billion, with Azrapart unable to pay it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the court noted that there were strong indications that Azrapart was unable to pay its debts, there were also indications that it could be successfully rescued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Azrapart’s primary defence was that it was finalising a transaction with the UK-based Redcore Hospitality, which would inject R2.6 billion into the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The funds would be enough to cover Azrapart’s liability, if realised. The prospect of the capital injection led to several delays in the court process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2025, the company told the court that the promised R2.6 billion was forthcoming. However, Investec and RMB hired a law firm in the UK to provide advice on Redcore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The law firm’s affidavit showed that Redcore reported no turnover in 2023 and had no employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the balance of probabilities, the court said that Redcore would be unlikely to provide a R2.6 billion injection to Azrapart. No bank confirmation letters were submitted to show the company had funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Investec and RMB said that they are severely prejudiced by the company remaining distressed, as the asset forming the subject of security, Fourways Mall, cannot be adequately managed and maintained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After nine months and the lack of proof of funds from Redcore, the High Court placed Azrapart under business rescue as per the Companies Act of 2008.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still signs of life <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
Fourways Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The Azrapart business rescue comes at a relatively positive time for Fourways Mall, which has faced extreme pressure in recent years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 178,000 sqm, Fourways Mall is the largest mall in the country. Its space expanded following a massive revamp in 2019, increasing the gross lettable area from 61,634 sqm to 88,875 sqm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mall saw a significant tenant drop following several extreme shocks, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the weak retail environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the mall is undergoing profound management shifts, as several empty stores start to fill up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mall has improved recently, letting 20,783 sqm of retail space and renewing leases for over 150 existing tenants over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mall has thus slashed its vacancy rate from 24% to 13%, according to Moneyweb<\/a>. Although this is still relatively high, it is heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accelerate has also pumped R400 million into the mall amidst the increased vacancies and the devaluation of the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Property experts Flanagan and Gerard and the Moolman Group took over as the mall managers, shifting the tenant mix to focus on an upwardly mobile shopper base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in the introduction of several \u201con-trend, convenient and purposeful stores and leisure activities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several new stores came to the mall, including Huawei, Levisons, Mochachos, Pet Shop Science and ZuluZenith, while popular restaurant chain Spur has also re-joined the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe strong performance of our new tenants confirms that our leasing strategy is on the right track,” said Juan Palm, Fourways Mall Centre Manager.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Azrapart has been placed under business rescue following an application from Investec and RMB. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":774229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[12426,22177,1498,2214],"class_list":["post-828102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-accelerate","tag-azrapart","tag-investec","tag-rmb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828102","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\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=828102"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":828127,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/828102\/revisions\/828127"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=828102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=828102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=828102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}