Board member reshuffle likely to weaken PPC

The PPC board last week broke its silence after more than a month of public campaigning against it by activist shareholders and former CEO Ketso Gordhan, who asked investors to back his return to the company.

The PPC board on Friday last week warned that should shareholders vote to replace it at a shareholder meeting on December 8, the company risked becoming destabilised, while the drastic move could also take its toll on staff morale and PPC’s African growth plans.

“It can clearly not be in the best interest of all stakeholders to lose the entire institutional memory of the current board members, who between them have about 36 years of tenure on the board,” PPC said while announcing the date for the meeting.

Against a rally in the JSE’s all share index, shares in PPC fell 1.61% to R27.45 on Friday as market uncertainty continued to fuel the volatility of PPC’s stock.

Foord Asset Management, which holds 8.6% of PPC’s voting rights, on October 23 demanded a special meeting, together with Visio Capital Management, which holds 1.68%, and Nedbank Private Wealth, with 0.08%.

In their formal request for the meeting, the shareholders said: “The current board needs to be replaced with a functional board with the correct expertise to run the company”.

This needed to be done hastily “in order to restore continuity to the operations and strategy of the company and is in the best interest of all stakeholders including shareholders and employees”.

The PPC board last week broke its silence after more than a month of public campaigning against it by activist shareholders and former CEO Ketso Gordhan, who asked investors to back his return to the company.

The company sought to shore up investor confidence ahead of the crucial vote, with the announcement of an important deal in Ethiopia, and another saying it had all but secured a major funding deal. It also finally hit back at Mr Gordhan by publishing an “embarrassing” set of reasons he had given the board when he had wanted to fire his finance director, Tryphosa Ramano.

PPC said on Friday that the allegation that the board was dysfunctional “is strongly denied”.