Noose tightens around Steinhoff
Banks exert control and multiple probes face shamed retailer
The noose seems to be tightening around Christo Wiese's scandal-ridden Steinhoff International, with some of the world's leading banks now pulling the strings at the furniture retailer, leading to his resignation as chairman of the group. Last week Steinhoff was implicated in accounting irregularities that led to the resignation of its long-serving CEO, Markus Jooste. Apart from the pressure from its lenders, Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba has assembled a regulatory task team from the Financial Services Board (FSB), Independent Regulatory Board of Auditors (IRBA) and the South African Revenue Service to look into the reported fraud and corruption that has seen the stock of one of Africa's biggest companies fall about 84% over the past two weeks."What's likely is that the banks are calling the shots. To an increasing extent they have big exposure from a debt perspective and so they are going to want to run the show more so than what was the case before this happened," Sean Ashton, ch...
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