(This December 14 story corrects to clarify Christo Wiese did not start Pepkor in paragraph 8)
By Emma Thomasson and Tiisetso Motsoeneng
BERLIN/JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South African tycoon Christo Wiese resigned on Thursday as chairman of Steinhoff (SNHG.DE), the latest setback for the retail group in the throes of an accounting scandal.
Once a must-have for investors who backed its reinvention from small furniture outfit into a retail empire, Steinhoff has seen its shares crash more than 80 percent since last week when it ordered an investigation into its accounts and parted ways with long-serving chief executive Markus Jooste.
Steinhoff said Wiese, its top shareholder and chairman who stood in as chief executive last week, had offered to step down to reinforce independent governance and address any possible conflict of interest.
He was also instrumental in reinventing Steinhoff, turning it from a modest distributor of furniture made in communist era eastern Europe to a global household goods retailer, vying for market share with the likes of IKEA.
But he suffered a setback this year when Steinhoff and Shoprite, in which Wiese owns a 20 percent stake, called off a deal in February to merge to create an African shopping giant, preventing Wiese from bringing more of his retail assets under one roof.
His resignation comes a day after Steinhoff’s second largest shareholder Public Investment Corporation expressed discomfort about possible conflict of interest in having Wiese as interim chief executive.
Steinhoff, which moved its primary share listing from Johannesburg to Frankfurt two years ago, has been under investigation for suspected accounting fraud in Germany since 2015. Four current and former managers are under suspicion of having overstated revenues at subsidiaries, prosecutors said.
Steinhoff has previously said that the investigation related to whether revenues were booked properly, and whether taxable profits were correctly declared.
($1 = 0.8480 euros)
0 comments
Share
