If the share price and the shortage of listed financial services empowerment companies is anything to go by, Brimstone Investment Corporation's phone must be ringing off the hook.
The share price is flying at a 12-month high of R1 a share, compared with a lowly 52c last October.
Of course, much of this can be attributed to the 149 percent increase in headline earnings to 14.8c a share and the maiden 4c dividend in the last year-end to March 31. The company is trading under a cautionary.
Brimstone is 57 percent black owned - one of only five listed companies with a black shareholding of over 50 percent. It aims to increase its stake in the financial services arena - it recently increased its stake in Peoples Bank to 10 percent from 8 percent.
Short-term insurance subsidiary Lion of Africa is showing strong growth. Speculation is it may be in negotiations with another short-term insurer. The acquisition of Quaystone, a Cape-based asset management company, has also been rumoured.
Brimstone could benefit from the financial services empowerment charter when it is released next month. EW
The prospect of the chairman of one of the largest banks in the world being dragged through a drawn-out court battle and facing a possible five-year jail sentence might be just what is needed to focus the minds of corporate remuneration committees.
It might also encourage remuneration consultants to introduce a modicum of sense to their analysis of executive remuneration.
It seems Deutsche Bank chairman Josef Ackermann is to stand trial on charges of breach of trust for approving a E15 million (about R126 million) payment to Klaus Esser, the former chief executive of German telecoms group Mannesmann.
The Financial Times notes that the decision to pursue Ackermann and other leading corporate executives through the court stems from severance payments made to Mannesmann executives following its hostile takeover by UK group Vodafone in 2000. Other managers received E43 million as part of an appreciation award for their part in securing a spectacular price from Vodafone.
The court action has sparked speculation that Deutsche management will try to engineer a merger to move the head office from Germany. AC
The recent upgrade by Global Credit Ratings of this retail group's short-term rating to A1 from A1- is not a major issue in the greater scheme of things, but it should provide a confidence boost for investors and could even bring down securitisation costs.
Following the securitisation of a portion of the debtors book, total debt decreased by R393 million to R183 million in financial 2003.
The rerating and reaffirmation of its long-term A rating, which denotes a high credit quality, will enhance faith in the strength of the Edgars Consolidated Stores (Edcon) balance sheet and the efficiency of its debt collections, reinforcing their belief that the group is well managed.
The rating comes at a good time, because Liberty Group said yesterday it had sold 2 million of Edcon to lighten what it termed "historically overweight equity positions" in its shareholder fund portfolio, leaving it with 300 000 shares, or 0.59 percent of Edcon.
Edcon has produced outstanding results for the past two years, with significantly improved cash flows and profit margins, and is expected to continue this performance.
Global Credit Ratings analyst Craig Kirkwood notes that despite the group's strong position in the local apparel industry, an appreciable level of risk is implied in its "considerable exposure" to the retailing environment in southern Africa. MI
You can almost feel the trauma as Remgro management attempts to keep in line with what must seem like never-ending demands for improved disclosure.
The latest annual report does represent an improvement on past years. We now have details of the remuneration packages received by each of the executives and non-executives, and they don't seem unreasonable. Or at least they don't seem as unreasonable as packages paid by some of the companies in which Remgro has large stakes, such as Dorbyl and Gencor.
But having made the big step on the remuneration disclosure front, perhaps next year Remgro could go really wild and reveal the first names of its directors. In an 80-page annual report only Visser and Rupert's first names are revealed. Somehow it does not seem right to know how much a man is paid but not his first name. AC
SAA is struggling with an important decision: which international alliance to join. The choice will probably be made by the end of the month.
So far SAA has managed to remain non-aligned. But this is becoming more difficult in today's competitive conditions in the airline business.
The choice is between the Star alliance, led by German airline Lufthansa, SAA's oldest commercial ally, and the Sky Team, to which SAA's US ally, Delta, and Air France belong.
Whichever choice SAA makes will involve changes to its route network.
Several of its codeshare partners in Europe and its South American ally, Varig, belong to the Star alliance. But Air France has a huge network in Francophone Africa and the Indian Ocean islands. Combined, the French airline and SAA could dominate Africa. AD