Johannesburg - Plans to resurrect Regal Treasury Private Bank were dismissed by the market yesterday.
The reaction came after Jeff Levenstein, the chief executive, said he wanted to take the bank out of curatorship by proving its decision to reverse 45 percent of its shares was within legal parameters.
He also wanted to reverse the R300 million sale of the bank's debt book to Investec, saying it was sold at a R50 million discount.
But David Shapiro, the managing director of SG Securities, said there was no turning back. No bank in South Africa's history has yet been brought out of curatorship without its sale on to another institution, Shapiro said.
Besides, if they managed to reverse the Reserve Bank's decision to place the bank under curatorship, it is unlikely that they would get any business.
Meanwhile Peter Redman, the JSE Securities Exchange's senior technical advisor for surveillance, said the investigation into Regal's alleged share price manipulation was almost complete.
There is no doubt that we are going to forward the report to the registrar, Redman said.
He hoped results of the investigation into the share's trading patterns would be handed over by the end of this week. Possible violations of JSE regulations would be handed to the Financial Services Board, which would then decide whether the case should be passed on to the directorate of public prosecutions.
Regal was placed in curatorship last month after the registrar of banks noted a run on deposits. It was alleged that depositors' money was used to prop up the share price and earnings figures.
Though such an action was not clearly illegal, Levenstein could have a hard time proving he had acted within the law.
Levenstein, who also wanted to reverse his resignation, told Classic Business that of the 45 percent of shares cancelled by authorities, 15 percent was taken up by share option schemes and another 15 percent was bought by Regal under the Banks Act, which allows bank to buy back their own shares to absorb an overhang in the market. The other 15 percent was apparently bought by financial units of Mettle.