Shareholders slam SARB secrecy

Reserve Bank shareholders have accused the bank's leaders of shrouding operations in secrecy and seeking a law change to oust them, rather than stand up to scrutiny.

In parliamentary hearings on the South African Reserve Bank Amendment Bill, German-born shareholder Michael Duerr delivered withering criticism of the way the bank runs monetary policy and its own corporate governance.

Duerr who, while sporting Lederhosen, famously clashed with former governor Tito Mboweni before relocating to Germany, said he could not take the bill seriously while the finance minister flouted the law currently in force.

The Treasury chief has failed for the past nine years to present Parliament with a shareholders' list every year, as required by article 93 of the Constitution.

"Since nine years, the minister of finance was not tabling and submitting which is required according to article 93 of the Constitution," an agitated Duerr said.

"He is actually in breach of the Constitution. Now how should I take this seriously if the minister is not even reading the act properly?

"The problem with corporate governance is that nothing has been done as it should be done in accordance with the act and according to the regulations," Duerr said.

Though fellow shareholders assured the finance committee they had no desire to influence monetary policy, Duerr readily conceded he would like to see an end to inflation targeting.

He said he had a debate with governor Gill Marcus on Monday in which he called for an overhaul of its refinancing model in the light of the global debt crisis, but she dismissed his suggestions as untested.

Duerr's family holds 100,000 shares, 10 times the limit imposed by the law.

What the bill would do

The bill approved by Cabinet last month seeks to stop any circumvention of this limit by restricting the number of votes a shareholder and his associates can exercise to 50, or one for every 200 shares.

It would strip Duerr of his voting rights altogether, though he has South African citizenship, because residency has been introduced as a requirement for voting.

The bill also introduces a requirement that directors be "fit and proper" and the creation of a panel to oversee the appointment of new directors.

Marcus is on record as saying the bank needs directors that will protect its interests instead of seeking personal financial gain.

She has asked Parliament to push through the amendment before the bank's annual meeting in September, where it needs to fill three vacancies.

In the dark

The rancour between shareholders and Reserve Bank management was patent at the hearing as dissenting shareholders accused the bank of bringing the amendment in a bid to get rid of them.

Said Mario Pretorius: "It is an outrageous bill. They are trying to get rid of shareholders by making sure their money is worth nothing. We should send this bill to the dustbin."

He said shareholders were being targeted for demanding information that would, within a normal culture of corporate governance, be well within their rights.

Instead, he said, the bank had refused to give them insight into why it lost close to R1 billion last year - only the second loss in its history - and its income fell 60 percent in the previous year.

Pretorius argued the singular importance of the bank meant more transparency was necessary to provide assurance it was on a firm footing, but that the amendment bill did nothing to achieve this.

"We have asked for more transparency but... it promotes darkness. If the Reserve Bank fails, we all stand to fail."

A submission by the Institute for Democracy in South Africa also pleaded for greater parliamentary oversight over the only central bank in the world that is wholly privately-owned.

It pointed out the political pitfalls of having the governor appointed by presidential decree, saying this could result in a similar situation to that in Argentina, where President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner fired the central bank chief for opposing the use of reserves to pay the nation's debts.