JOHANNESBURG - Trading in the shares of ready-mixed concrete and aggregates supplier WG Wearne and property developer Visual International Holdings has been suspended by the JSE with immediate effect.
The JSE said yesterday that this followed the companies’ failure to comply with the JSE’s listing requirements by not submitting their provisional financial statements within three months.
Wearne said yesterday that it had put in place a programme to ensure its provisional financial results were released by July 30, and discussions with major shareholders about the recapitalisation of the group were continuing.
Both companies had entered into debt-funding agreements with US private equity firm Milost Global which they claimed were not fulfilled.
Wearne advised shareholders at the end of May that it expected its financial results for the year to February this year to be released only after the group had resolved certain recapitalisation issues.
The need for the recapitalisation followed its termination in May of a funding agreement entered into with Milost Global in October last year.
Milost Global had, in terms of an equity subscription agreement, committed to invest up to R300million in Wearne, which claimed Milost Global had failed to fulfil its obligations in terms of this agreement.
However, Bloomberg reported in April this year that the Wearne deal was still on. It quoted Solly Asibey, the chief investment partner at Milost Global, as stating that Wearne had made two draw-downs in terms of debt-financing agreement.
Visual International renewed a cautionary announcement last month and, among other things, referred to the failure by Milost Global to pay the claw-back subscriptions of R10.23m in line with the new terms of a debt-financing agreement published in May to recapitalise the company.