8chan/8kun QResearch SOUTH AFRICA Posts (4)
#16588194 at 2022-07-03 14:46:02 (UTC+1)
Q Research South Africa #7: "TRUTH cannot be hidden forever" Edition
"Cracks in South Africa's White Monopolies", 1993 - (more like "strategies" than "cracks") Gencor, Anglo American, Michael Spicer, Sanlam, Oppenheimer, Tito Mboweni, and more - Part 4
https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/17/business/cracks-in-south-africa-s-white-monopolies.html
June 17, 1993
Indeed, Sanlam is an Afrikaner company, the product of a drive that began in the late 1930's to gain Afrikaners a piece of the English-dominated private economy.
Sanlam began as the South African National Life Assurance Company, which, with the help of new tax laws that favored insurance over other forms of savings, soon was buying controlling interests in companies across the industrial spectrum.
In itself, both Gencor officials and independent analysts say, the unbundling of Gencor's corporate tangle is aimed mainly at limbering up a musclebound corporate structure, not at promoting economic democracy or competition.
Gencor, which mines gold, platinum, coal and other minerals, had become the group's parking lot for a diverse range of acquisitions. When the shift takes effect in August, those companies will split off; Gencor itself will shrink from 20 billion rand in assets, or $6.3 billion at the current rate of exchange, to about half as much.
"Conglomerate structures housing groups of unrelated businesses are today regarded as inefficient by many investors around the world," said Brian Gilbertson, Gencor's chairman, when he announced the move.
Sanlam will reduce its holding in the new lineup of companies from more than half to about 35 percent, giving up absolute control.
Sanlam's other move, selling off shares in Metropolitan Life, was billed explicitly as "black economic empowerment."
The black consortium will initially control 10 percent of the company, with an option on 20 percent more. Sanlam is to pool its own 30 percent with the black consortium, and let the black group take the lead in deciding how to spend the company's capital, now about $500 million.
Since 85 percent of Metropolitan's policyholders are black, in a sense this is putting black capital at the disposal of black managers.
"For this economy to improve on a sustained, long-term basis, you need to get an environment where all the people can participate in the economy in the fullest sense," said Marinus H. Daling, chief executive of Sanlam's holding company, Sankorp. "Up to now the majority of the population participated only by selling their labor. By this deal, we are setting up a situation where they participate by controlling capital." South Africans Seen as Buyers
#16557720 at 2022-06-29 18:40:31 (UTC+1)
Q Research South Africa #7: "TRUTH cannot be hidden forever" Edition
>>16554880
>1993 Transitional Executive Council takes $850m loan from International Monetary Fund with IMF manager Michel Camdessus informing Nelson Mandela that Apartheid era Finance Minister Derek Keys and Reserve Bank Governor Chris Stals must be reappointed after democratic elections as a condition for the loan
>>16493488
>By 1994, [Mick] Davis had made contacts at Gencor and joined as a director after being passed over for Eskom chief executive. He became chief financial officer, helping to buy Billiton, Royal Dutch/Shell's minerals subsidiary. Three years later he worked on switching the company's listing to London under the Billiton name.
>Last year he was involved in another merger, forming BHP Billiton with Australian mining house Broken Hill. Working with Billiton chief executive Brian Gilbertson, he helped pull off the deal, but became restless again after Gilbertson was given a four-year contract to head the new organisation.
"Cape Town - Gencor, the now dormant investment holding group, is a pale shadow of its former self." - Derek Keys, Chris Stals, Billiton, Anglo American, Anglovaal etc.
https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/economy/gencor-fades-but-scars-remain-743970
February 5, 2006
Yet in its heyday Gencor represented the might of Afrikaner capital with investments in Gengold, Impala Platinum (Implats), Richards Bay Minerals, Samancor, Trans-Natal and the Alusaf and Columbus projects.
Derek Keys, a former Gencor chief executive and the finance minister in the government of national unity, persuaded the then governor of the Reserve Bank, Chris Stals, to authorise Gencor to ship $2.1 billion abroad to buy Billiton from Royal Dutch Shell.
Months later Keys retired as finance minister to become the chairman of Billiton. ["Keys resigned shortly on 6 July 1994, and was replaced by banker Chris Liebenberg on 19 September." https://prabook.com/web/derek_lyle.keys/335990] After several asset shuffles and purchases, Billiton became BHP Billiton, one of the world's largest minerals companies.
Yet it was not for the enormous wealth that it generated that Gencor would be remembered in its dying days. The company had an appalling record of human rights abuses and an equally terrible safety record. As a gold producer, it had among the highest numbers of deaths and disabling injuries.
In the 1980s, according to Flynn, Gencor and Gold Fields had the ignominious reputation of paying the lowest increases among Chamber of Mines members. When mine workers went on strike, the company had no hesitation to use repressive methods.
In 1985, following former Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser's exposure that a gassing system had been installed at an Anglo American gold mine to stun workers with nerve gasses, Gencor admitted to the Financial Mail that it had a similar system at one of its mines near Klerksdorp.
Anglovaal [Majority owned by the Hersov and Menell families] also admitted that it had gas canisters in place in liquor outlets and dining rooms at hostels at its Lorraine and Hartebeesfontein gold mines.
This was at a time when mining firms used armoured riot control vehicles, specially designed rubber bullets, teams of savage dogs and large quantities of live ammunition to control workers.
#16493488 at 2022-06-23 12:02:04 (UTC+1)
Q Research South Africa #7: "TRUTH cannot be hidden forever" Edition
>>16440035
>>16488858
>Gencor bought Billiton International from Royal Dutch Shell in 1994 for ?780 million, giving Gencor the opportunity to operate as an aluminum trader as well as producer. However, Billiton was not to remain very long under Gencor's umbrella.
"Business Profile: The story of a miner [Mick Davis] who struck gold" - KPMG, Gencor, Billiton
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2758114/Business-Profile-The-story-of-a-miner-who-struck-gold.html
30 March 2002
The Mick Davis story starts in South Africa in 1980, when a confident young man from Port Elizabeth began work for Peat Marwick, the accountants now called KPMG. In 1987, at 29, he left to join Eskom, one of South Africa's largest electricity utilities, where he was promoted to finance director.
By 1994, Davis had made contacts at Gencor and joined as a director after being passed over for Eskom chief executive. He became chief financial officer, helping to buy Billiton, Royal Dutch/Shell's minerals subsidiary. Three years later he worked on switching the company's listing to London under the Billiton name.
Last year he was involved in another merger, forming BHP Billiton with Australian mining house Broken Hill. Working with Billiton chief executive Brian Gilbertson, he helped pull off the deal, but became restless again after Gilbertson was given a four-year contract to head the new organisation.
The rest is history. Davis was approached by Glencore, which had pulled an Australian flotation of Xstrata after September 11. The Swiss firm wanted Xstrata to become a consolidator in the fragmented mining sector. Davis was their man. He decided Xstrata had to buy something and move its listing to London.
"Up until recently, London had become an irrelevancy in terms of mining finance," he says. "It started off at the turn of the 20th century as the major provider in mining finance, but after the Second World War the whole industry had been decimated.
"The reintroduction of Billiton into the market, together with Rio Tinto, created a revival of that sector. Anglo American came in shortly therefter, and today London is the major provider of capital from both an equity and a debt point of view to the largest diversified mining companies."
#16488858 at 2022-06-22 16:14:33 (UTC+1)
Q Research South Africa #7: "TRUTH cannot be hidden forever" Edition
>>16488831
>1998: Gold Fields of South Africa and Gencor merge to form Gold Fields Ltd.
>>16298818
>>16321313
History of Gencor - Anglo American, Harry Oppenheimer, Lonrho
https://www.company-histories.com/Gold-Fields-Ltd-Company-History.html
A major change took place during the 1960s when the Afrikaner-dominated mining house Federale Mynbou took control of General Mining. This was effected with the assistance of Anglo American, and its chairman Harry Oppenheimer in particular, who wished to assist the Afrikaans business community in attaining a better foothold in the mining industry. This aim had a political purpose.
The decade since Gencor's formation was a time of upheaval for the group. In the first half of the 1980s there was a lack of direction at Gencor, but this had changed under the leadership of Derek Keys. Keys was succeeded by Brian Gilbertson, who presided over Gencor at a time when politicians viewed the pyramid organization of such conglomerates with suspicion. Unbundling these complicated structures would also tend to increase share prices, which were traditionally undervalued in this system. Subsequently, Gencor divested itself of Engen, Genbel, Malbak, and Sappi.
Gencor bought Billiton International from Royal Dutch Shell in 1994 for ?780 million, giving Gencor the opportunity to operate as an aluminum trader as well as producer. However, Billiton was not to remain very long under Gencor's umbrella.
The European Commission scuttled Gencor's plans to merge Implats with Lonrho's platinum interests on anti-competition grounds. The only other competitor in South Africa, the EC reasoned, would have been Amplats (the platinum interests of Anglo American Corp.), and Russia was the only other external supplier. Gencor already owned a 27 percent share in the Lonrho operations Western Platinum and Eastern Platinum.
Gold Fields and Gencor Unite in 1998
By the time Gold Fields and Gencor made the decision to merge in the late 1990s, the South African gold mining industry was faltering. Gold production had fallen due to declining ore grades, higher mining costs, unhappy laborers, and overall industry restructuring. In 1997, gold production bottomed out, reaching its lowest level since 1956. In 1998, the gold assets of both Gencor and Gold Fields were merged, bringing together three of South Africa's most significant mines–Driefontein, Kloof, and Beatrix. The deal created Gold Fields Ltd., the country's second-largest gold concern and one of the largest in the world. At the same time, competitor Anglo American consolidated all of its gold assets into Anglogold, creating the world's largest producer of gold. Both transactions proved that the landscape of South Africa's mining industry was indeed experiencing considerable change.