{"id":832394,"date":"2025-07-22T09:11:46","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T07:11:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=832394"},"modified":"2025-07-22T11:22:36","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T09:22:36","slug":"ghost-of-steinhoff-raises-r27-billion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/832394\/ghost-of-steinhoff-raises-r27-billion\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghost of Steinhoff raises R27 billion"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Ibex Investment Holdings Ltd., formerly known as Steinhoff International Holdings NV, raised R26.6 billion rand by selling its entire stake in Africa\u2019s largest clothing retailer, Pepkor Holdings Ltd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pepkor\u2019s shares gained as much as 3.8% and traded 1% stronger by 10:28 a.m. in Johannesburg.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ibex sold 1.05 billion Pepkor shares at a discount of about 6% to the last closing price, according to terms seen by Bloomberg. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase &amp; Co. and Investec Plc managed the share sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The disposal is part of Ibex\u2019s move to restructure Steinhoff, which collapsed after an accounting scandal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steinhoff built a retail empire spanning Australia, Europe and the US, including acquiring a controlling stake in Pepkor and changing the company\u2019s name to Steinhoff Africa Retail Ltd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The share sale will help remove an overhang on Pepkor\u2019s shares.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe free-float of Pepkor has increased substantially due to this placement,\u201d said Jean Pierre Verster, the chief executive officer of investment firm Protea Capital Management Pty Ltd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cPepkor shareholders can now look forward to index-tracking funds increasing their weight in Pepkor shares.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pepkor&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2018-05-29\/steinhoff-africa-shuns-toxic-parent-in-return-to-pepkor-roots\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reverted<\/a>&nbsp;to its original name after the fraud, which wiped out more than 95% of its market value.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Steinhoff, which owned Conforama in France and Mattress Firm in the US, unraveled after auditors refused to sign off on its financial statements in 2017. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That led to the start of police and regulatory investigations in both Europe and South Africa. The probe by auditor PwC uncovered \u20ac6.5 billion ($7.4 billion) of irregular transactions with eight firms over eight years.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The company changed its name to Ibex in 2023. It held the Pepkor stake through its wholly owned unit Ainsley Holdings Ltd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ibex Investment Holdings Ltd., formerly known as Steinhoff International, raised R26.6 billion rand by selling its stake in Africa\u2019s largest clothing retailer, Pepkor Holdings Ltd.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":590930,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[23184,23183,4076,11703],"class_list":["post-832394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-ibex","tag-ibex-investment-holdings","tag-pepkor","tag-steinhoff-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832394","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=832394"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832432,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832394\/revisions\/832432"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=832394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=832394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=832394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}