Dimension Data co-founder Jeremy Ord and five other former executives of the tech group are preparing to launch an appeal against last week’s court verdict that voided the R1.4bn sale of the Bryanston Campus, saying the judgment was unjustified and unfair.
“The judgment ... came as a surprise to us and our legal team, who are preparing an application for leave to appeal against the findings made by the judge,” said the executives — which include former CEO Jason Goodall and former head of the Didata Middle East unit Grant Bodley — in a statement.
Their comments form the latest episode in the long-running saga that burst to the surface in 2022.
Last week, the high court sent shock waves through the SA corporate sector when it voided the R1.4bn sale of Didata’s Bryanston Campus, citing conspiracy by the senior executives to subvert broad BEE legislation, and drawing an angry reaction from the Black Business Council.
The judgment exposed a web of deceit involving special business arrangements such as nominee and en commandite partnerships designed to conceal the true beneficiaries of the transaction.
According to the judgment, their plan included manipulating the property valuation to secure a bargain and using vendor financing to further reduce their financial burden.
The scheme also implicates Steven Nathan, former head of corporate development, Saki Missaikos, former strategy head, Bruce Watson, longtime executive, and Martin Epstein, a property developer who was used as a front when it became necessary to disclose the identities for the beneficiaries.
Still, the executives strongly contest these findings and are prepared to clear their names.
“The perception that this was no more than a surreptitious conspiracy by ‘six white males’ to arrest control of the campus property to feather our own nests at the expense of empowerment is just plain wrong and deeply distressing to us,” the executives said.
The executives insisted that the transaction was conducted at fair value, created wealth for broad-based black investors and had the blessing of NTT, Didata’s Japanese parent company.
Under the deal, according to their version, the campus was sold to a black woman-owned investment house founded by Didata board member Sonja de Bruyn in July 2019.
Three months later, the sprawling property was transferred to a fund set up by De Bruyn’s group.
“In terms of the relevant BEE codes, the BEE result flowed from the fund being managed by a black fund manager regardless of who invested in the fund,” the executives said, suggesting that BEE compliance was not in the racial composition of underlying investors of the asset but in the fund being managed by a black manager.
They added that the structure of the deal was a common private equity set-up, complete with the backing from legal advice from Eversheds and Webber Wentzel, two top law firms and an unnamed commercial bank.
The executives also rejected the perception that they had a say in how the deal would be financed, saying NTT, of its own accord, decided to vendor-fund the deal with a surplus from Japan.
“We have facilitated a number of transactions which have had meaningful benefits for empowerment and gender equality during our tenure at Dimension Data,” they said.
“We have always been and remain fully committed to the achievement of transformation and the sharing of wealth with the less fortunate to redress the wrongs of the past.”
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