South Africa

South Africa's competition watchdog on Wednesday gave Lewis Group preliminary approval to purchase more than 60 stores from failed furniture firm Ellerine, paving the way for a $8 million deal that is expected to save nearly 400 jobs, Reuters reported. The Competition Commission said in a statement it would recommend that Lewis, which sells furniture and appliances to lower-income shoppers, be allowed to acquire 63 shops operating under the Beares brand as long as there were no job cuts. Approval from the commission is the first hurdle under South African law.

Four of South Africa's biggest banks are owed $53 million by Ellerine, the money-losing furniture firm that African Bank Investments (Abil) cut funding to just before the lender collapsed, documents showed, Reuters reported. The debt reflects the extent to which Abil's failure in August has rippled across corporate South Africa, knocking credit ratings, investor confidence and even hurting small suppliers such as florists and panel beaters.

South Africa will sacrifice economic expansion in the next two years by limiting spending growth and raising more taxes as it seeks to avoid a debt trap, Bloomberg News reported. The government will cut its expenditure limit by 25 billion rand ($2.3 billion) and plans 27 billion rand of “structural increases” in revenue in the period, the National Treasury said in the mid-term budget released in Cape Town today. “We have reached the turning point,” Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene told reporters before his budget speech to Parliament.

When in 2011, Maria Cristina Erasmus wanted to fix up her house, the 63-year-old retiree took out a bank loan of 50,000 South African rand ($4,465). When she wanted to buy furniture, she borrowed more, The Wall Street Journal reported. Mrs. Erasmus and her taxi-driver husband offered no collateral but agreed to pay 30% annual interest—about four times the country's average lending rate. Now, she can't repay the 100,000 rand that is owed. "We moved to a cheaper house, but we couldn't do it," Mrs. Erasmus said.

Failed South African lender African Bank Investments (Abil) plans to re-list on the Johannesburg exchange in February and may expand into secured lending and insurance, its government-appointed supervisor was quoted saying by a local newspaper on Friday, Reuters reported. Tom Winterboer, appointed by the central bank to restructure the unsecured lender after it faltered under a mountain of bad debts in August, also told Business Day the bank had collected "well over" 2 billion rand ($182 million) from borrowers over the past month.

Perhaps because they had no access to banking during apartheid, poor South Africans have been gorging themselves on credit ever since. A glut of consumers impatient to enjoy a middle-class lifestyle has made the fortunes of payday lenders, which charge sky-high interest rates for smallish unsecured loans. Yet, after weeks on the ropes, African Bank, the biggest purveyor of such loans, has had to be rescued from near-bankruptcy, The Economist reported. South Africa’s authorities insist there is no broader rot in the financial system.

Bond investors in African Bank Investments Ltd., who sent prices down by more than 50 percent this week, are joining shareholders in signaling the South African provider of unsecured loans is running out of options, Bloomberg News reported today. The price on African Bank’s $350 million of bonds due February 2017 slumped to 45 percent of face value yesterday, from 99 on Aug. 1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That drove the yield to 47.49 percent, surging more than 29 percentage points the past two days. The extra yield investors demand to hold the bonds rather than equivalent U.S.

African Bank Investments Ltd., South Africa’s largest unsecured loan provider, lost about 90 percent of its market value after forecasting a record loss and saying it needs to tap investors for $791 million of fresh capital, Bloomberg News reported yesterday. African Bank is reeling after saying its chief executive officer resigned, losses would be at a record this year and it would need to tap investors for funds for the second time in less than a year.

Civil engineering company Protech Khuthele is applying for liquidation. This was announced in a Sens statement released on Tuesday, Moneyweb reported. At the end of May, Protech announced that it had voluntarily started with for business rescue proceedings, filing on June 2. It said it had received demands for immediate repayment for project expenses which it was unable to meet. "The main cash flows that Protech currently receives are payments from debtors for current and completed projects.

South Africa’s credit rating was cut to one level above junk by Standard & Poor’s as the longest mining strike in the nation’s history threatens to drag the economy into recession, curbing government revenue, Bloomberg News reported. The foreign-currency rating was lowered to BBB- from BBB and the local-currency rating was reduced to BBB+ from A-, S&P said in a statement yesterday. The outlook on the ratings were raised to stable from negative. Fitch Ratings also lowered the outlook on its BBB grading to negative from stable.