South African Reserve Bank

• Steinhoff International Holdings N.V. in liquidatie (“SIHNV” or the “Company”) provides the following update regarding the liquidation of the Company.
• At an extraordinary general meeting held on 26 July 2023, SIHNV’s shareholders voted in favour of the dissolution of the Company.
• The liquidators have today been informed by the Amsterdam District Court that no creditor opposition was filed during the two month statutory period.
• The Company has a primary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the JSE Limited.

• It is disheartening to see how many South Africans, including parliamentarians, have forgotten the simple and influential role the Land and Agricultural Development Bank (Land Bank) played in South African agriculture.
• The Land Bank was a conduit for cheap money for mortgage finance for farmers, for production finance to co-operatives, and for the liquidity of the marketing boards.
• The Land Bank, established in 1912, had a narrow mandate for many decades.
• Its funding model and its narrow mandate meant that, for decades, it was a stable institution.
• Secondly, the bank’s activities most be refocused to mortgage finance for land purchases and wholesale finance for production credit.

Funding

• With this mix of funds, its cost of capital was far below the prime rate.
• In essence, Land Bank, in a true sense, fulfilled its development mandate – it provided affordable finance.
• It is also impossible for farmers to start a business with interest rates above the prime lending rate.
• New leadership also changed the nature of the Land Bank to be more commercially focused and to compete with commercial banks.
• The other big change involved Land Bank linking its lending rate to the prime rate.

What needs to be done

• The bank’s cost of capital should be lower than the repo rate (rate at which the Reserve Bank lends to commercial banks).
• This could happen through a one-off parliamentary appropriation of R10 billion (about US$533 million).
• Johann Kirsten and Wandile Sihlobo wrote this essay from notes they prepared for students at the department of agricultural economics at Stellenbosch University.
• Johann Kirsten is Professor in Agricultural Economics and the Director of the Bureau for Economic Research at Stellenbosch University.

• In addition, in August 2021 Naspers and Prosus completed an exchange offer in which Prosus issued new Prosus ordinary shares N (Prosus Ordinary Shares N) to the holders (Naspers N Shareholders or Naspers Free-Float Shareholders) of Naspers N ordinary shares (Naspers N Ordinary Shares) that accepted such exchange offer, in exchange for acquiring their Naspers N Ordinary Shares (the Exchange Offer).
• excluding Naspers), (ii) new unlisted Prosus ordinary shares B (Prosus Ordinary Shares B) to Naspers, and (iii) new unlisted Prosus ordinary shares A1 (Prosus Ordinary Shares A), to the holders of the issued Prosus Ordinary Shares A (collectively, the Prosus Capitalisation Issue).
• Naspers will antecedently and irrevocably waive its entitlement to Prosus Ordinary Shares N and consequently not receive new Prosus Ordinary Shares N under the Prosus Capitalisation Issue.
• Naspers's voting interest and control of Prosus is determined by the total voting rights that Naspers has in Prosus pursuant to the Prosus Ordinary Shares N and the Prosus Ordinary Shares B that Naspers holds.

• Agenda and registration now available for hybrid event on March 21 – March 23, 2023
  SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 11, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The Business Architecture Guild®, an international community of business architecture practitioners with members in over 100 countries, released the agenda for the 11th annual Business Architecture Innovation Summit ™ to be held virtually and in-person in Reston, VA, USA, March 21–23, 2023.
• Agenda and Registration Now Available for 11th Annual Business Architecture Innovation Summit on March 21-23, 2023
  The Business Architecture Innovation Summit™ is the premier event for business leaders seeking industry success stories and advancements.
• William Ulrich, Guild President and Co-founder said, "This year's Summit agenda settles any doubt that business architecture has now reached every industry and corner of the globe.
• The practice, as defined by the Business Architecture Guild®, has officially gone global and is being applied in an ever-widening set of strategy execution scenarios."