CAPE TOWN - Africa's first multi-sided platform company, Sagarmatha Technologies, is set to announce its private placement subscriptions on Wednesday, two days before it’s planned JSE listing on Friday.
Gary Hadfield, the joint chief executive of Sagarmatha Technologies and the chief executive of Loot.co.za, said to fear the unknown is to disregard the potential of the future.
This comes in the wake of negative commentary from various media houses that are in competition with Independent Media, in which Sagarmatha will have an interest post acquisition on listing date.
The media have made claims that Dr Iqbal Survé, the chairperson of Independent Media, has an ambitious plan to list the company on the JSE to raise money to settle the media group’s debt.
Sagarmatha has rubbished all these allegations, stating that while Independent Media does have debts to settle the debts are all shareholder debt.
Sagarmatha Logo.
Also, the company is ahead of schedule with its payments. Shareholder debt is generally the most junior debt in a company and since it belongs to shareholders it can’t be viewed with the same lens as bank or third party debt and the lenders also have residual interest since they are also equity participants.
Hadfield said: “Yes, there is shareholder debt in Independent Media, that is no secret.
“It was there pre-Sekunjalo with the previous Irish owners and restructured as part of the acquisition by Sekunjalo in 2013 when new equity participants came on.
“We’ve disclosed that in the pre-listing statement - not that it was a secret in any event. So, accusing us of just raising money to clear debt is in my opinion, narrow-minded.”
Sagarmatha, needs a minimum of R3 billion to list on the JSE.