Phumelela’s ultimate insider urges creditors to reject Oppenheimers

Rian du Plessis, a successful merchant banker and corporate executive before his 10-year reign as CEO at now struggling Phumelela is furious about the destruction of shareholder value at the company he left generating an annual profit of R155m. In this stinging interview, this ultimate insider, who is also Phumelela's fourth-biggest shareholder, discloses that he personally offered to pay up to R300m for one of the numerous plum assets in the company, but was ignored by the business rescue practitioner. Du Plessis says Phumelela's creditors, who vote on Tuesday, would be wrong to support vote an apparent lifesaving offer from wealthy horse breeder and owner Mary Slack Oppenheimer. Her bid, which is supported, would give creditors just over 70c in the rand, but shareholders very little. Du Plessis says the Mary Oppenheimer and Daughters' offer is vague and opaque and from what he can see of it, substantially undervalues the company. He reckons the offer from UK group BetFred is much the better one. – Alec Hogg 

While most people were tied up with Covid-19 and lockdowns, there's been a fascinating Battle Royale in the South African horseracing industry. We heard last week from an organisation that calls themselves MOD – that's Mary Oppenheimer and daughters – riding to the rescue of South African racing. And then this week, a UK operation called BetFred put in a very generous offer, double what we've seen so far. The former chief executive of Phumelela, the man who's been taking a lot of heat over the decline in the business, Rian du Plessis, joins us. We go back a long time. I remember your days at RMB and then the work that you did at Comparex, a big computer company. When you then moved to Phumelela it was almost like you'd taken a step backwards. What motivated you to go into Phumelela to take over as CEO?

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