{"id":841581,"date":"2025-11-01T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=841581"},"modified":"2025-11-01T07:16:53","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T05:16:53","slug":"end-of-an-era-for-owner-of-south-africas-biggest-shopping-mall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/841581\/end-of-an-era-for-owner-of-south-africas-biggest-shopping-mall\/","title":{"rendered":"End of an era for owner of South Africa’s biggest shopping mall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The owner of Fourways Mall, Accelerate Property Fund, has marked the end of an era with former CEO and director, Michael Georgiou, being booted off its board after 12 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Accelerate’s AGM earlier in October, Georgiou was booted from the board when over 97% of shareholders voted against his reappointment<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Accelerate is the 50% co-owner of Fourways Mall, with the other 50% owned by Georgiou’s investment vehicle Azrapart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georgiou has always been inextricably tied up in Accelerate and Fourways Mall, having been a director of the company since 2013, including being the group’s CEO when it listed that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He stepped down as CEO of Accelerate in 2022, purportedly to focus on the development of Fourways Mall, but remained on the AFP board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Georgiou also held a significant interest in Accelerate itself\u2014but this dropped to just 4% this year after Investec and FirstRand\u2019s RMB acquired 312 million shares from him, which were put up as security for funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things continued to be strained for Georgiou in 2025, with Azrapart being forced into business rescue by the Free State High Court in June<\/strong><\/a>. This followed an application from Investec and RMB.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from Azrapart, Georgiou is also tied to various entities involved with the mall and the Fourways Precinct as a whole\u2014all owing millions to Accelerate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2024, Accelerate and these entities reached an agreement to “restructure” various debts owed to fall collectively under Azrapart, totalling just under R800 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This included R632 million owed by the Fourways Precinct, R134 million owed by the Michael Family Trust, and R30 million owed by Azrapart itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To settle the debt, the groups found a creative solution where Accelerate agreed to pay Azrapart R300 million as part of a \u201crebuilt claim\u201d, including R71 million for the delay in settling the claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, Accelerate would pay Azrapart R75 million for an undivided share of 50% of the remaining bulk of development space, and another R242 million for an undivided share of 50% of the parking bays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After finding a balance for all the debts owed between Accelerate and Azrapart, the total was brought to nil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, with Azrapart in business rescue, Accelerate was forced to chalk up the debts owed by Azrapart under its expected credit losses (ECL) for the full year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resulted in the category ballooning to R1 billion, and pushing the group’s annual loss to R1.27 billion<\/strong><\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the development of Fourways Mall, it is now being run and managed by Accelerate and its appointed managers, Flanagan & Gerard and the Moolman Group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turnaround at Fourways Mall<\/h2>\n\n\n
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New Walmart storefront at Fourways Mall<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Despite the financial mess happening behind the scenes, the efforts by Accelerate and the new managers to turn Fourways Mall around have been paying off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through a R400 million injection into the mall, the managers have improved its tenant mix and have made a concerted effort to target upwardly mobile shoppers and draw lost foot traffic back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Popular gym chain Planet Fitness became a key addition to the mall in August, opening its 51st gym in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other retailers that recently joined the mall include Huawei, Spur, Mochachos, Pet Shop Science and ZuluZenith, while Spur has also re-joined the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Financial service providers, African Bank and Travelex, have also moved to more convenient positions in the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another major brand that is likely to draw attention from South African shoppers is the coming launch of Wallmart at the mall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The US retail giant is expected to launch several branded stores for the first time in South Africa in the coming weeks, with its presence at Fourways Mall already confirmed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the new stores, the mall has been working on a large-scale solar energy system that will see a large section of the roof decked in solar panels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Navigating Fourways Mall has also become easier due to several recent upgrades, such as improved signage, brighter lighting and a more intuitive wayfinding system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mall has also changed its operating hours, now open until 20h00 each day, with free parking after 17h00.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shopfronts at Fourways Mall<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Owner of Fourways Mall, Accelerate Property Fund, has marked the end of an era, with its former CEO and director being booted of its board after 12 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":841613,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[19940,22177,19746],"class_list":["post-841581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-accelerate-property-fund","tag-azrapart","tag-fourways-mall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841581","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=841581"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841581\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841662,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841581\/revisions\/841662"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}