Concerns over Engen's Botswana takeover

South Africa's Com­pet­i­tion and Con­sumer Author­ity (CCA) is expec­ted to deliver a rul­ing within the next 30 days on Fusion Spark’s pro­posed acquis­i­tion of a con­trolling stake in Engen Bot­swana

Speak­ing at a recent hear­ing, CCA CEO, Gideon Nkala, said the com­pet­i­tion watch­dog is gath­er­ing inform­a­tion from the mer­ging parties and inter­ested stake­hold­ers before determ­in­ing whether the trans­ac­tion is likely to sub­stan­tially lessen com­pet­i­tion or neg­at­ively affect the pub­lic interest.

“This hear­ing is to seek inform­a­tion to help determ­in­e that will help pro­tect com­pet­i­tion,” he said. “We will care­fully review what was said dur­ing the hear­ing and what has been sub­mit­ted before mak­ing a rul­ing.”

Some stake­hold­ers argued that the sale was not pub­licly advert­ised and that they only became aware of the oppor­tun­ity after poten­tial buy­ers had already expressed interest. They ques­tioned whether all pro­spect­ive investors had been afforded a fair oppor­tun­ity to par­ti­cip­ate in the bid­ding pro­cess.

Law­yers rep­res­ent­ing the mer­ging parties dis­missed the claims, main­tain­ing that the divest­ment pro­cess was pub­licly advert­ised after Pet­ro­leum Hold­ings decided to dis­pose of its entire stake.

They said inter­ested parties were invited to sub­mit bind­ing offers, adding that the object­ive was to identify a cred­ible investor cap­able of sus­tain­ing com­pet­i­tion in Bot­swana’s pet­ro­leum mar­ket.

The hear­ing also brought into focus Fusion Spark’s own­er­ship struc­ture. Stake­hold­ers raised con­cerns over Ottapathu, arguing that his exist­ing retail interests could even­tu­ally influ­ence Engen’s nation­wide net­work of filling sta­tions. Engen has 67 ser­vice sta­tions across the coun­try.

Full story PressReader.com | Con­cerns raised as Engen takeover advances