Company News in Brief

Pepkor acquires Choice Clothing

Pepkor, the owner of PEP and Ackermans, announced the acquisition of Choice Clothing, a discount retailer with over 100 stores across South Africa and Namibia, which trades under the Choice Clothing and Big Daddy retail brands, respectively. Pepkor didn't provide a figure for the transaction, but said in a statement that with its strong market share in babies and kids wear, the acquisition builds on its strategy to expand participation in adult wear, where the group's market share comes up shorter. Choice Clothing is positioned at the bottom-end of the discount market, a high growth segment that bridges the gap between the formal discount and informal markets, it said. "The acquisition of Choice Clothing represents an exciting opportunity for Pepkor to reach even more customers in the discount and informal space, enabling us to grow our share in the adult wear market," COO Sean Cardinaal said in a statement. "While the Choice business may be small in comparison to other Pepkor businesses, this is a business which we can grow aggressively by leveraging our scale and capability to potentially triple the retail footprint in the medium term." In a post-results presentation on Tuesday, Pepkor had said Choice Clothing is scalable to over 300 stores. The group had just under 5 900 stores as of the end of September.-FIN24



Former Dimension Data execs slammed for insider trading

A court has slammed six former white executives of IT group Dimension Data for cooking up a "brazen and dishonest" scheme to "secretly" gain ownership of the group's Bryanston headquarters and related assets – which was meant to be sold in a black economic empowerment (BEE) deal. The civil case deals with the sale of Dimension Data's — now NTT Data — flagship Johannesburg office park, The Campus, for R1.4 billion five years ago. The Campus hosts DTT Data's SA headquarters, as well as a number of other tenants.-FIN24



VW to sell Xinjiang operations

Volkswagen is to sell all its operations in China's Xinjiang, it said on Wednesday, after years of mounting pressure to abandon its presence in a region where rights groups have documented abuses against the Uyghur population. The carmaker made the announcement at the same time as saying it would extend its partnership with Chinese partner SAIC by a decade to 2040, a major move by the German carmaker in its biggest market, where sales have been flagging. VW and SAIC will sell their plant in Xinjiang to Shanghai Motor Vehicle Inspection Certification (SMVIC), a unit of state-owned Shanghai Lingang Development Group, which will take on all its employees, they said. Under the terms of the deal, for which financial details were not disclosed, SMVIC will also take over SAIC/VW's test tracks in Turpan, Xinjiang, and Anting in Shanghai. Volkswagen will then no longer have a presence in Xinjiang. Beijing has denied any abuses there. - Reuters



Adani Group loses $55 billion in fraud case

India's Adani Group conglomerate said Wednesday it had lost almost $55 billion (almost R1 trillion) in a stock market rout since US prosecutors last week accused its founder and other officials of fraud. The November 20 bombshell indictment in New York accused billionaire industrialist founder Gautam Adani and multiple subordinates of deliberately misleading international investors as part of a bribery scheme. It said they had "devised a scheme to offer, authorise, make and promise to make bribes payments to Indian government officials". The firm, which denies the charges, said in a statement on Wednesday: "Since the intimation of the US DoJ (Department of Justice) indictment, the group has suffered a loss of near $55 billion in its market capitalisation across its 11 listed companies." - AFP