R1.1-billion windfall for Vodacom employees

12 June 2018 - 08:15 By Nick Hedley
subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now
A pedestrian walks past a Vodacom-branded billboard.
A pedestrian walks past a Vodacom-branded billboard.
Image: Nadine Hutton/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Vodacom will spend R1.1-billion on an employee share ownership scheme as part of its R17.5-billion broad-based black economic empowerment deal - the biggest BEE deal in the telecommunications sector.

The scheme will benefit 4‚637 permanent employees in South Africa.

"The employee share scheme effectively is for all employees‚ but black employees and [especially] black female employees will obviously get the lion’s share‚" Vodacom Group CEO Shameel Joosub told Business Day.

It was targeted more towards general staff as opposed to management‚ he said.

Vodacom would spend about R1.1bn on the employee share scheme, which would be geared to give staff effective exposure to the group’s shares of R3.5bn — an average of nearly R755,000 per qualifying staff member.

Meanwhile, the group’s new BEE deal, which was announced on Monday, will replace the scheme that was launched in 2008 and which expires in October 2018.

If approved, the transaction will pool all of Vodacom’s BEE shareholders under a single entity, JSE-listed YeboYethu, and will see existing black shareholders exchanging their shares in Vodacom’s South African business for Vodacom Group stock, giving them exposure to other markets.

- Read the full story on BusinessLIVE.


subscribe Just R20 for the first month. Support independent journalism by subscribing to our digital news package.
Subscribe now