Absa chair Wendy Lucas-Bull has distanced the lender from board member Sipho Pityana’s accusations that the Prudential Authority had acted illegally and blocked his nomination to replace her in 2022.
In her high court filing lodged on Tuesday, Lucas-Bull said Pityana was in a board meeting in September 2020 in which a succession "roadmap" was discussed. This included an engagement with the PA prior to any candidate being nominated, and Pityana had raised no objection to this. It was clear that this was not a substitution of Absa engaging in its own deliberations concerning the appointment of the next chair, she said.
Pityana dropped a bombshell in October when he went to the high court seeking that it declare the authority, which is part of the Reserve Bank, had unlawfully conducted an “informal process” with Absa, leading to the lender rescinding a plan to nominate him as chair.
Lucas-Bull, who is due to step down in March 2022, effectively sided with the regulator, which had filed its own papers earlier on Tuesday, disputing that Pityana had a case in terms of the law, while also challenging his version of events that led to Absa choosing another candidate, Sello Moloko.
“There was nothing irregular or unlawful in the interaction between the members of the Absa board and the authority,” she wrote.
While Absa, which was cited in Pityana’s papers as an interested party, has previously sought to avoid a public fight with its former lead director, Lucas-Bull said Pityana’s application, if granted “will have significant consequences for Absa, its reputation and the reputation of the Absa board”.
In her papers, Lucas-Bull admitted that the authority had expressed concerns about Pityana’s potential appointment, and that in the end the board had resolved that it would be “inappropriate to challenge the authority” by formally submitting Pityana’s name “in circumstances where the concern had been raised by the authority and had not been satisfactorily resolved”.
Misled her
She also disclosed a sharp division between herself and Pityana on his intention to directly challenge the authority to provide reasons for its decision.
“I explicitly requested him not to do so,” she said. This was ignored, she said, and the authority responded to Pityana’s attorneys, indicating that no such decision was made and that it was up to Absa to submit a formal application.
In the papers, she also said that Pityana had misled her by suggesting that he had been vindicated after an investigation at AngloGold Ashanti (AGA) into allegations of sexual harassment. He had not initially disclosed the appointment of an outside counsel that made adverse findings against him.
“The impression created by Pityana was that his version had been accepted by AGA as truthful and that the matter had been closed off. My conclusion from this discussion was that Pityana’s verdict had been accepted and in fact said I was happy for him,” she said.
It was only in May 2021 that she became aware that AngloGold had appointed an outside counsel to look into the allegations, and that Pityana’s version of events had been rejected.
This was about five months after Pityana had told her about the possibility he might step down from AngloGold and that he had been subjected to a “false” allegation. This took place “on or about” December 2, 2020, she said.
The allegation has been one of the central factors in the controversy with Pityana having accused AngloGold chair Maria Ramos of improperly using access to Prudential Authority CEO Kuben Naidoo, with whom she previously worked in the Treasury, to disclose it to the regulator and use it to block his appointment.
In his own papers, Naidoo denied that Ramos was a source of this, or had an influence in the decision-making process of the authority.
Clarification: November 24 2021
The story was updated in the second paragraph to clarify the process of engagement between the PA and Absa.
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