Johannesburg - The remains of troubled African Bank, which was placed under curatorship last August, now has a CFO designate after Gustav Raubenheimer was appointed to the post.
This was revealed in a statement to shareholders this morning.
As part of the move to rescue African Bank, which resulted in some investors losing money, a new bank was formed.
Good Bank will hold all African Bank’s viable assets and business, while the non-viable assets and business would remain in the existing African Bank entity, which has been calls “Bad Bank”.
Raubenheimer has been with African Bank since October 2012 as the executive for credit. Before that role, he was the chief risk officer for Retail and Business Banking at Absa Bank between 2008 and 2012.
He joined Absa from Nedbank where he was the head of the Retail Credit Lab from 2002 to 2008. Gustav’s employment contract remains with African Bank for the time being and will be novated to Good Bank.
Raubenheimer is a qualified Chartered Accountant (South Africa) and qualified as a Chartered Financial Analyst in 2003. He also holds a Treasury Diploma from UNISA and has completed an Advanced Management Course from the University of the Witwatersrand.
Towards the end of last month, African Bank said it was a step closer to its stated intention of creating a “good bank” out of its toxic assets after the Banks Act Amendment Bill was signed into law with effect from June 29.
Tom Winterboer, the curator, outlined a proposal to create a “good bank” from the bad one, subject to a number of conditions, including agreement being reached with creditors, the signing of the Bank Amendment Act and the granting of a new banking licence by the South African Reserve Bank.
Earlier this year, Winterboer said the bank had received the go-ahead from creditors to split its good loans from its toxic assets. He said that both senior unsecured debt holders and subordinated debt holders had agreed in principle to the bank’s restructuring proposal.
Senior unsecured debt holders will have 90 percent of their claims exchanged for new unsecured notes in the lender’s “good bank” and the rest as residual securities in African Bank.
Subordinated creditors can have their claims, totalling R4.4 billion, converted into equity or exchanged for a combination of notes in the good bank and subordinated residual debt instruments.
Winterboer had earlier said he expected the new bank to be operational by the beginning of October but last month said he was not able to confirm timing.
After the bank’s collapse last August amid record losses and a lack of funding, Moody’s Investors Service cut the creditworthiness of local banks.