Billionaire Christo Wiese, the businessman most stung by the near-collapse of Steinhoff, has raised about R3.6bn in a placement of shares in Shoprite, Africa’s biggest supermarket chain.
Wiese has been selling assets to raise money since Steinhoff, the retailer in which he was the largest investor, announced accounting irregularities in December.
The 76-year-old personally sold about R4.2bn worth of shares in Shoprite Holdings over three separate deals in the wake of the scandal, with the latest sell-off being conducted by Titan Premier Investments, one of his investment vehicles.
Under the terms of the deal, Cape Town-based Shoprite sold 17-million shares at R210 apiece, representing 2.9% of its issued stock, to institutional investors on behalf of Titan, according to an e-mailed statement on Wednesday.
Shoprite shares declined 0.9% to R224.89 on the JSE on Tuesday.
Steinhoff stock has crashed more than 97% since reporting the financial wrongdoing on December 5, causing a slump in Wiese’s net worth to about R30bn from close to R70bn.
He is suing Steinhoff, the owner of Conforama in France and Mattress Firm in the US, for R59bn.
Shoprite’s stock has slid 5.1% over the same period, valuing the company at R133bn.
Share placement
The Shoprite shares were placed through an accelerated bookbuild in which Morgan Stanley, FirstRand’s Rand Merchant Bank and Barclays Africa’s Absa Capital are the joint bookrunners.
Titan owned about 79-million shares in Shoprite ahead of the placement, representing about 14% of the grocery chain.
In late 2016, Wiese had sought to merge the grocer with Steinhoff, only for the talks to collapse amid a disagreement over valuations.
The billionaire bought into Steinhoff when he sold his Pepkor Holdings, Africa’s biggest clothing chain, to the company for about R63bn in 2015.
The retail entrepreneur will remain the company’s biggest shareholder, based on data compiled by Bloomberg.
Correction: June 27 2018
This article has been amended to make clear Wiese is not cutting his stake in Shoprite.
Bloomberg
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