After getting about R40 million for half of its investment in Steinhoff, PIC keeps running for dear life.
The PIC was able to sell more than half of the shares it still owned in Steinhoff, a retailer that is legally bankrupt.
The public found out about this when Steinhoff said at the end of the week before that the PIC owned 185 million shares or 4.34 percent of the company.
In December 2017, the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) told the Netherlands Authority for Financial Markets (AFM) that it owned 423 million shares of Steinhoff, which is 9.91%. A statement from 2021 says that the company’s stock has decreased to 8.56 %, which seems to be less than before.
Due to the size of the stock, it is likely that it would have taken several weeks to sell off the stake on the market. It seems unlikely that anyone interested in an off-market deal would have bought a share this big.
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Recently, there was a significant change in the number of shares, which shows that someone sold them. In the 52 weeks before, an average of 6.3 million Steinhoff shares were traded daily. This is a lot less than the average of 15 million per day over the past ten days and 18 million per month over the past three months. Even though it has been slowly selling off its investment over the past three months, the share price has mostly stayed below 30 cents.
Optimism
After the crash, it is strange that the PIC has kept its interest alive for the past five years. For some unknown reason, the PIC may have thought it would be possible to get back some of the lost value.
After the company announced in December that it was planning a reorganization in which lenders would get 80% of a new holding company that would not be on the stock market, the price of its shares dropped by a lot. This happened after the people found out about the planned reorganization.
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Based on the idea, each donor who had already put money in would get 20%.
During the company’s annual general meeting in March, shareholders had to vote on the plan. They knew that if they voted against the bill, they would not get anything as a result. The creditors would own the whole business.
At the yearly meeting, only about 40% of investors voted. According to people who took part in the vote, voters were against every single resolution on the list, including the one about restructuring.
Restructuring of the group
Since then, the restructuring has gone on. In the Netherlands, this can not go on without court approval.
The price of the company’s shares has been over 20 cents or one euro cent, which is strange.
The group is having trouble speeding up this process and staying true to the terms of the deal it made with investors.
plan to reach a deal
In September 2021, the PIC and Steinhoff announced that they had reached a settlement deal “to support the implementation of the global settlement.”
In 2018, the PIC, along with more than 40 big investors, sued the company for damages in a Dutch court. The claims were about losses caused by the way it did its accounts. The sides were able to come to an agreement through the mediation process.
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The PIC says that it “believes the proposed settlement was in the best interests of its clients, given the cost of protracted litigation and the uncertainty that comes with it, as well as the possibility that share value would go down even more.”
Steinhoff said this year that the world settlement would start on February 15. Since the beginning of last week, it has been giving claims their money back.
At the moment, it has received 43 000 claims from people and businesses worth €3.2 billion, which is close to R67 billion. People and groups from all over the world made these claims.
