Stock Talk: Wanted, sussed CEO to lead debt-laden retail giant

"I hope so," was the response from one successful recently retired retail executive when he heard that Edcon CEO Jurgen Schreiber would take up no further position in retail in South Africa.

"He misread this market so completely," the executive said. Schreiber, it turns out, is heading back to Canada to take up a retail position there.

Before that news leaked to the market this week, Edcon released another set of poor results, which highlighted both its continued inability to recover some of its former glory and the mounting debt pressure it is operating under. The group's performance under Schreiber has been dismal.

During the week, Edcon announced that US private equity firm Bain Capital Partners would search for his successor.

Hopefully it will be third time lucky for Bain. Its appointment of controversial Frenchman Hugues Witvoet as CEO of Edgars Department Store in 2008 was not a great success. Witvoet, whose academic qualifications were apparently never confirmed while he was at Edcon, left in 2012. Schreiber assumed his responsibilities.

In Schreiber's defence, when he took over the top job, Edcon was already firmly heading down a slippery slope.

This was no doubt the reason that he felt it necessary to bring a battalion of McKinsey consultants with him.

The McKinsey team set up camp in Edgardale for a two-year sojourn. Amazingly, despite their hefty expense, it seems Schreiber ignored many of their key recommendations.

Google takes Tencent tips

This week's news from Google that users will be able to enjoy a much greater level of inter-activity with the sites they access marks a push-back from this once-dominant player whose lunch has been eaten up by all manner of new entrants, not least of which is the not-so-new Amazon. The planned activity appears to include being able to make purchases, or bookings, from the search site.

If it all sounds a little familiar it's because prospects for O2O or online-to-offline business is what has been driving Tencent's share price for much of this year - and dragging Naspers along with it.

Earlier this year Chinese analysts were talking about the prospect of O2O business opportunities justifying as much as a 20% hike in valuations of internet stocks such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent. As one analyst remarked, most internet firms have traditionally made money from advertising. In future they want a slice of the business they create.

HCI and the regulators

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. In the commentary accompanying the annual results released last week, Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) CEO Johnny Copelyn bemoaned the regulatory difficulties that were a regular feature of the company's life.

Since the turn of the century, Copelyn has been the major force behind the growth of this very profitable conglomerate.

The former trade unionist, who was thought to have had excellent government contacts at the time, focused his early strategy on the accumulation of businesses in regulated areas of the economy such as media, gaming and liquor.

So regulation should be no surprise - or even much of an inconvenience. But good luck with challenging the minister's bizarre set-top box plans. The prospect of DStv's strangleholdnever being loosened is as depressing as it is perplexing.

Unsecured lending case

Disappointing news this week from the Western Cape High Court was the postponement to the second half of June of the much-awaited decision on the use of emolument attachment orders to secure payment of unsecured loans. A ruling was expected this week but the judge postponed on the understandable grounds that more time was needed to consider this very complex issue.

Early this year, Stellenbosch University's Legal Aid Clinic approached the court in a bid to ensure that there was more effective oversight of the granting of the attachment orders.

The clinic wants to ensure the orders can only be issued after consideration by a magistrate in a court in the area where the borrower works or lives.