According to Pieter Uys, a senior executive at Remgro who also serves as chairman of CIVH, the largest shareholder in Maziv, Remgro, CIVH controlling shareholders are preparing ways to tackle the competition authorities to get an R10.2-billion deal with Vodacom across the line.
Maziv is a new holding company of both Vumatel and Dark Fibre Africa. According to MyBroadband the company was “established specifically for the deal, or a deal like it, allowing Vodacom to take a stake in the company in exchange for R9 billion cash and its fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) assets, valued at R4.2 billion.”
Remgro strategic investments head Pieter Uys said they believe they will receive positive results from their proposed Vodacom-Maziv deal with the Competition Tribunal.
Speaking to MyBroadband Uys said, there’s nothing negative he could say about the Competition Commission as they are just doing their job.
“If there is one negative I could mention, it’s that there wasn’t an interactive component to the process,” he said.
Uys said they have been exchanging documents with CompComm for over 18 months and believes that the interaction would work much better if it was an in-person meeting as it will give them an opportunity to hash out the commission’s concerns.
“There are no issues that’s been raised by anybody out there — [by] third-parties and the Commission —that I do not personally know [we could] solve through an obligation commitment we can make,” Uys said.
He said the billions of rand that Vodacom will inject into Maziv will dramatically accelerate Vumatel’s ambition to connect underserviced areas, including townships, with uncapped fibre internet. He said the Maziv 30% co-controlling stake that Vodacom agreed to buy will help the business to be able to achieve in three to four years what it would take a decade if the Vodacom investment were to be scuppered.
“This started pre-Covid when CIVH realised that if we want to execute fully on our strategy, we need more capital injected into the business,” Uys said.
“In the end, Vodacom agreed to many of the conditions we had for an investor to come in,” he said. “We wanted financial backing behind our strategy; we don’t have unlimited pockets.”
