Santam war with clients; Covid-19 vaccine shows promise; Prosus may lose EBay deal; Curro; Denel

By Nadim Nyker

  • Financial services group Santam is set to see its time in court. This comes as insured business owners were refused pay-outs, despite the insurance regulatory authority’s direction to do so. Umhlanga restaurant owner Duncan Heafield reportedly said that Santam’s lack of empathy to repudiate his claim, along with 2,000 others, is like holding a gun against the head of establishments, trying purely to survive. This comes after the Western Cape High Court compelled insurer Guardrisk to honour a “Business Interruption” claim. Guardrisk’s argument that losses suffered by the claimant were due to the lockdown, and not the Covid-19 pandemic, was rejected by the judge.
  • According to Bloomberg, the coronavirus vaccine has showed promising results in early human testing. The vaccine in development by the University of Oxford, has showed progress in the high-stakes pursuit to defeat the pathogen. Adrian Hill, head of Oxford’s Jenner Institute said they are seeing very good immune responses. The results will be closely scrutinised, as governments around the world seek to end a pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 people and triggered economic turmoil since erupting earlier this year.
  • EBay is nearing an agreement to sell its classified advertising unit to Norwegian online marketplace Adevinta ASA. Adevinta, who was competing with Naspers owned e-commerce investor Prosus, will reach a $9bn deal, according to Bloomberg. This would add to the whopping $240bn worth of deals announced in the technology industry this year.
  • Shareholders for private schooling group Curro have voted in favour of a proposed R1.5bn rights offer. This is to help the private schooling group reduce its debt as it navigates the Covid-19 economy, with plans to possibly take over other private schooling groups struggling survive. Curro said in a statement that it will be issuing 185,873,606 partially underwritten new shares. At the time of the announcement, it said shareholders would be able to snatch up the new shares at R8.07 per share. This was roughly a 10% discount to the 30-day volume weighted average traded price on the JSE at the time of the initial announcement.
  • According to Reuters, the chief executive of state owned defence firm Denel will step down on Aug. 15. Denel has struggled to pay employee salaries amid a liquidity crisis aggravated by the Covid-19 pandemic. The company did not say why CEO Danie du Toit was resigning and in its statement, Denel said an interim CEO would be appointed shortly. One of several state firms being kept afloat with government bailouts, Denel received R1.8bn ($108m) from the state last year. It was promised another R576m in this year’s budget, but those funds are earmarked to help clear debt and so far only R72m has been disbursed.
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