THE chairperson of AYO Technology Solutions, Dr Wallace Mgoqi, has slammed the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) for applying what appears to be apartheid-era tactics to suppress transformation among listed companies.
Mgoqi was reacting to two SENS announcements released by the JSE yesterday morning, censuring two former AYO non-executive directors, Telang Ntsasa and Mbuso Khoza, who were members of the company’s audit and risk committee in 2018. AYO listed on the JSE in December 2017.
The JSE imposed immediate disqualification from holding the office of a director or from being an officer of a listed company for a period of five years on Ntsasa and Khoza. Mgoqi described this as extremely harsh for directors who were indirectly involved in the preparation of the company’s 2018 interim results.
“The JSE clearly admits that the two directors were not directly involved in the preparation of the interim results but goes ahead, in a largely unprecedented move, to impose a severe sentence on them.”
Mgoqi also questioned whether it was perhaps the directors’ link to AYO, a company whose distinctive remit is transformation of the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, that served for the JSE to impose such a harsh penalty.
AYO has been the target of a coordinated media campaign to undermine its reputation in recent years.
While censures are by nature retrospective, the chairperson also queried why it had taken the JSE four years to come to the realisation it needed to “punish these directors”.
“Again, I say I have never heard of such harsh treatment of directors who were indirectly involved in the preparation of interim results. I am not aware of any other such treatment of any other director, even those in companies that have been shown to commit fraud.
“This seems to me to be pure discrimination and a clear move to further tarnish the name of a black-owned listed company, and suppress transformation. The only freedom we got in 1994 is the freedom to vote, oppression still largely exists within the financial sector,” said Mgoqi.
The JSE had in April 2019, requested AYO’s external auditors, BDO South Africa, to perform a factual findings report on the 2018 interim financial results, as a result of management having identified certain amendments. These were all accepted amendments, as the results were released according to factual findings at that time.
AYO said in a statement, then: “Although the request by the JSE was highly unusual, given that these were unaudited interim results and which were in fact supported by the published audited August 2018 results, AYO can confirm it fully cooperated with the JSE and with auditors BDO South Africa, who conducted the engagement in terms of International Standard on Related Services (“ISRS”) 4400: Engagements to Perform Agreed-Upon Procedures Regarding Financial Information.”
AYO later withdrew a trading cautionary, after it released the audited results.
In a statement issued today, AYO said it did not agree with the JSE censure imposed on the two directors.
BUSINESS REPORT ONLINE