Johannesburg - Banks would provide finance to the empowerment consortium that was to buy a stake in Telkom valued at R7.2 billion, Smuts Ngonyama, an adviser to the consortium, confirmed yesterday.
The consortium, led by former communications director-general Andile Ngcaba, will buy 15.1 percent of the telecommunications parastatal.
"The banks are funding it. I cannot disclose which banks," said Ngonyama, who is also head of the presidency in the ANC. Further details of the transaction would be released next week, after the deal was closed.
Although neither Ngcaba nor Ngonyama would say where the money was coming from, the markets yesterday were awash with rumours that investment bank JP Morgan was involved.
JP Morgan was one of the lead investment banks when Telkom listed last year and a strong relationship has already been forged between the two.
One currency specialist said JP Morgan had been very active in the foreign currency market for the past week and a half.
At first, he said, no one could tell why, but when the Telkom empowerment deal was announced the reason for JP Morgan's robust dollar buying was "clear".
JP Morgan refused to comment yesterday. Nedbank Capital confirmed yesterday that it was arranger and adviser to the empowerment consortium, but no further details were immediately available.
Stephen van Coller, the director of corporate finance at Deutsche Bank, said his bank was not advising or financing the consortium. Absa and Standard Bank would not say whether they had been approached.
Thintana said on Monday that it planned to sell its stake to a still-to-be named empowerment consortium led by Ngcaba and Women Investment Portfolio Holdings (Wiphold).
The empowerment consortium has until Monday to meet the conditions laid down by Thintana, which is owned by US-based SBC Communications and Telekom Malaysia.
Thintana has undertaken, in its agreement with the government, to sell its stake in Telkom by November 15.
Walt Shart, a spokesperson for SBC Communications, was not prepared to add anything to the Thintana statement issued on Monday. He said the company would provide details "at the appropriate time".
In the meantime, the empowerment consortium is believed to be in discussions over how to split the shareholding.
It has indicated that at least 50 percent would be held by broad-based empowerment groupings, which would consist of 2 000 community service telephone operators, 300 000 women as represented by Wiphold and broad-based women's organisations from all nine provinces.
The deal has drawn criticism from opposition parties and Cosatu.
Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille said: "Obviously, these people in their personal capacity do have the right to be in consortiums, but we expected that in a Telkom deal the poor would benefit.
"The exercise of selling off parastatals has been the transfer of wealth from one elite to another."
She added that a new layer of millionaires and billionaires was being created, and the poor excluded.
Johannesburg - The exit of Thintana as a foreign strategic equity partner in Telkom was "long overdue", according to the Communications Workers' Union (CWU).
Mfanafuthi Sithebe, the telecoms co-ordinator of the CWU, an affiliate of Cosatu, said: "We are happy that Thintana is leaving the country because it did not bring any benefits to the workers."
The union, however, had concerns about the content of the agreement related to Thintana selling its 15.1 percent stake in Telkom.
He said the union did not know the content of the agreement between Thintana and the empowerment consortium led by Andile Ngcaba and Women Investment Portfolio Holdings.
"We would love to be briefed about the transaction at an early stage in order to be recognised as a stakeholder in Telkom," he said.
Thintana had been milking the resources of Telkom by replacing workers with new technology while not training or developing Telkom employees, he said.
The CWU would meet the empowerment consortium tomorrow and would take a position afterwards.
-Sapa, Renee Bonorchis, Sherilee Bridge, Wiseman Khuzwayo, Gugulakhe Masango.