Former EOH director fined R500k for faking PhD
Bogdanov falsely claimed to have a PhD from the London Business School.
As a result, she has also been banned from serving on the boards of JSE-listed companies for the next 10 years.
Dr Esewu Mathebula, from the South African Association of PhDs, says they are working to collaborate with law enforcement to root out this kind of misconduct.
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At Prime Kapital for example, one of their key strengths in this fight is that they hold the keys to unlocking the capital that is currently tied up in the joint venture between MAS and Prime Kapital. With so much focus on the balance sheet at MAS and a desire to get back to paying dividends, that capital is a highly valuable bargaining chip. This joint venture has been a major bone of contention for institutional investors, with allegations that the board of MAS didn't disclose important elements of the joint venture agreement to the market. Simply put, investors have been caught by surprise that Prime Kapital holds quite so much influence over the broader MAS balance sheet and cashflow profile. This has led to the demand by investors for changes to the board, which would include the removal of a couple of directors and the appointment of several new independent directors. 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Although it is currently suggesting that it would put more cash on the table than Hyprop (which is a positive), the downside to its indicative offer is that the equity portion would take the form of an inward-listed preference share that is unlikely to have much liquidity at all. The actual terms of the preference shares do have some appealing features, but they will almost certainly require investors to take a long-term view of holding them until some kind of redemption event. In contrast, Hyprop shares are liquid and investors who swap their MAS exposure for shares in Hyprop would have no trouble in reducing that stake if required. The Hyprop offer is thus perceived as having a stronger equity portion, while the Prime Kapital indicative terms are stronger on the cash side. Understanding these levers is important, as it shows how we got to a place where Hyprop put in a bid that was terminated almost as quickly as it arrived. 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In other words, investors would have to accept the offer (via an irrevocable undertaking) and then wait and see how long it would take for conditions to be met. But there's more: one of the conditions was a demand by Hyprop to be given the same access to information as Prime Kapital, which of course ties in beautifully with the institutional investors and their valid concerns around disclosure shortcomings. Now, had there been no attempt to address those shortcomings, this would be fair. But the nuance here is that the MAS board had already released a detailed legal summary of the terms, so this demand by Hyprop implied that there were still significant disclosure issues. If true, that casts the MAS board in a very poor light. And if false, then it creates inappropriate optionality in the offer that prejudices shareholders who must give an irrevocable undertaking in the hope that Hyprop eventually chooses to go ahead with closing the offer, something that could take several months. As the demand by Hyprop wasn't going to be met by Prime Kapital (as this would've required detailed disclosure of documents by a party that is in no mood to cooperate with Hyprop's bid terms), Hyprop decided to walk away from this offer. Much as it may lay the blame at the door of poor disclosure, I still can't see how they could justify such an aggressive offer structure. Why was it necessary for the acceptance period to be just one week, particularly when the price implied by the offer was at a substantial discount to the current traded price of MAS? What's next? With Hyprop terminating its bid, Prime Kapital has won the first skirmish. But the war is in its early stages, as we are still talking about a substantial property fund that is trading at a juicy discount. Will Hyprop stay in this fight? Will another party enter the fray? There's no way of knowing. All we know is that Prime Kapital certainly isn't going anywhere, as it is a significant minority shareholder in MAS and holds great influence over its economics. We also know that the institutions won't just roll over, as they are pushing for changes to the board and answers about disclosure. It feels unlikely that this will just fizzle out. All eyes will now be on the extraordinary general meeting in August, followed by the responses of the (potentially new) board to the institutional investor questions. If nothing else, perhaps the lesson to learn here is that if you are going to attempt an offer with highly unusual terms, you are setting yourself up for an unpleasant outcome. Had Hyprop simply dialled back some of the terms to more reasonable levels, it wouldn't have given Prime Kapital so much ammunition to discredit its bid. DM
