Paper Tiger. Alide Dasnois

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СКАЧАТЬ London office, and implemented a redundancy scheme at the Sunday World newspaper in Ireland. In Cape Town, Newspaper House had already been sold (in 2011), and the R90 million proceeds shipped home to Ireland.

      But in spite of all this destruction, the debt reduction was very slow and by June 2012 it seemed that the parent company would have to sell off bigger assets to pay off part of the debt. O’Brien now had just under 30% of INM plc. By June 2012, Irish newspapers were reporting that he wanted to sell the South African operation and spend the money on the company’s Australian ventures. For the first time, the sale of INMSA was officially on the table. And bidders were not slow to respond.

      The Irish Times reported on 15 June 2012 that ‘Sekunjalo Investment Holdings, which has as its CEO former African National Congress (ANC) activist Iqbal Survé, is said to be putting a bid together; while so too is ANC-linked businessman Cyril Ramaphosa of Shanduka Investment Holdings’. On 10 July, the Financial Times reported that INM, described as ‘the indebted Irish media group’, had appointed advisers to work towards a sale of its South African publishing business. Sekunjalo and Shanduka were again mentioned as possible bidders.

      It was time to revive the idea of the staff trust. Crotty, Dasnois and Gumani had brought Gordon Young, investment adviser to black empowerment group Ditikeni, on board. Young agreed to advise the trust in exchange for a small stake in INMSA for Ditikeni.

      Crotty and Dasnois approached staff again, pointing out that ‘there has recently been a change of control of the Independent News and Media Group in Dublin. The new controlling shareholders appear to be keen to sell INMSA. They have already appointed advisers to assist them. This provides us with an opportunity to seek a shareholding in INMSA.’

      Once again, reaction from INMSA management was hostile. On 29 May 2012, group editorial director Moegsien Williams flew to Cape Town to warn Dasnois to stop ‘sowing discontent and uncertainty’ among staff through the idea of the staff trust. Williams told Dasnois that she must not use company resources or company time to send information to staff about the trust, and she must not ‘embarrass’ the CEO or ‘put him in a difficult position’. If she continued to do so, the company would have to ‘look at taking action’. ‘We are very serious about dealing with this matter,’ he told her. In a follow-up letter sent to her on 1 June, Williams emphasised: ‘The company has not been put up for sale, and while you are in our employ, we expect you to further the company’s best interests.’ She was then handed a written warning not to disregard his instructions on the matter.

      Though the ban on communicating through workplace channels made it harder for the trustees to stay in touch with staff, discussions with staff members continued, and Crotty, Dasnois and Gumani organised meetings in Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. Staff members who had stood by powerless during the destruction of the O’Reilly years welcomed the chance of a stake in the future and signed letters of support.

      As the trust had no funds, Crotty and Dasnois paid for air tickets, blog development and the registration fees of the trust out of their own pockets. Work on the trust deed was done pro bono by the firm of lawyers ENS. The trust was registered in December 2012 as the Independent Trust for Media Freedom, with Gumani, Crotty and Dasnois as its founding trustees. The trust deed stipulated that new trustees would be elected by members within 120 days of the trust’s registration.

      The trustees and Young also engaged in talks with several people who were officially or unofficially interested in a bid. One of the bidders they met, in a Rondebosch cafe in July, was Iqbal Survé, who was going to Ireland a few days later. He did not discard the idea of partnering with the trust, but set the limit of a staff shareholding at 10%. In a letter to the trustees and Young on 15 July, thanking them for the meeting, Survé said he was looking forward to working with the workers’ trust. ‘Hopefully we can do something together.’

      He attached to the letter the latest edition of Leadership magazine which contained a long article about him. This, he said, was because his decision ‘to remain outside the public eye’ for the previous few years had ‘created a lot of mystique’, and the article might ‘demystify who I am since it helps to set aside any speculation’.

      Crotty replied on 17 July that Survé’s proposed stake of 10% for staff ‘does not accurately reflect the full value of the considerable intellectual capital that our staff trust brings to any bid to buy out the South African assets’, but that the trustees were happy to keep talking. The fact was that Crotty, Dasnois and Gumani were reluctant to throw the weight of the trust behind Survé – whose bid might not succeed – for anything less than a promise of 25%.

      Survé wrote to Crotty on 24 July 2012 to say he had appointed advisers and was ‘confident of our position’ relative to rivals and wanted to finalise the partners in the consortium. He asked for the names of all the participants in the trust. He also said that ‘another group of former and current Independent employees’ had formally presented their credentials ‘and are now included in our consortium’, and he tried to pressure the trustees into a commitment. Crotty replied on 25 July that the trust was unable to accommodate his deadline. Much later, it was to become clear how much this had angered him.

      Meanwhile, in September INM plc reported very poor interim results, with expectations that the second half of the year might be as bad. INMSA’s contribution to group profits had dropped by 34%, partly because of the closure of the Cape Town printing operation and the drop in commercial print revenue.

      The company noted that several parties had shown interest in acquiring the South African operation and said that this was being considered. CEO Crowley indicated that the sale of INMSA could halve the group’s debt level of €423 million, implying that the South African company was valued at around €210 million, or approximately R2 billion at current exchange rates.

      There was now speculation that a second undisclosed bidder – Sekunjalo being the first – might be the Gupta family, rather than Ramaphosa. The Guptas were to become notorious in South Africa for their role in ‘state capture’ – the use of corrupt politicians to access state resources.

      As Investec was advising INM plc about the sale, Gordon Young approached Investec on behalf of the trust, asking to be kept informed and to receive the memorandum of confidential information sent to other bidders. In response, Investec asked for proof of support for the trust from staff. But the trustees were concerned about possible victimisation of staff members who supported the trust. Instead, they asked Mwasa, which had 393 members or 28% of all staff, and the South African Typographical Union (Satu), with 161 members or 11% of all staff, to send letters of support for the initiative to Investec.

      Crotty told Investec on 11 November: ‘We are not prepared to give INM a copy of the list of employees who have signed in support of the trust … During the past ten years there have been frequent retrenchment exercises at INMSA – even during periods of strong profit growth – and this has created a general sense of insecurity amongst employees. Because of this we felt it was necessary to provide staff with some comfort that their names would not be disclosed to management of INMSA. Our desire to provide this comfort was heightened by the animosity towards the Staff Trust initiative that, rightly or wrongly, employees sensed from top management – certainly Alide Dasnois and I both felt our continued employment at INMSA was under threat.’

      On 13 November 2012, the trustees were able to update staff on developments. ‘There is apparently a short-list of three interested bidders; it is unclear who they are but the speculation is that Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo is one of the three. [The mining magnate] Patrice Motsepe might also be involved in a bid. In addition there is speculation that [businessman] Muzi Kuzwayo is part of a group that may be making a bid.

      ‘The Guptas apparently remain on the sidelines at this stage; their offer of approximately R1.2 billion has been deemed too low to be considered. If the other parties do not make СКАЧАТЬ