JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s state pension fund said on Wednesday that struggling African Bank Investments was “almost like a bottomless pit” after the unsecured lender warned of a $600 million full-year loss and said it would launch its second big capital raising in about a year.
“We have really been spending a lot of money on this company, it’s almost like a bottomless pit now and we need to find a way of closing it,” Dan Matjila, chief investment officer at the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), told Reuters.
The PIC, which manages government employee pensions, is the second-biggest shareholder in African Bank with about a 15 percent stake.
