The sale of Hosken Consolidated Investments’ (HCI’s) 35 percent stake in Clover Industries, South Africa’s biggest milk producer, for R337 million had been concluded, the empowerment group announced at the weekend. Analysts believe the relationship between HCI and Clover soured over a lack of restructuring at the latter. HCI owns preference and ordinary shares, both of which it will sell. HCI chief executive Johnny Copelyn said he was concerned that the capital structure of Clover resulted in shareholders being unable to realise fair value. “In truth, the preference shares traded at a fraction of their fair value and there was no trade in the ordinary shares of the company because of the peculiarities of those shares that involved the duty to provide Clover with milk.”

Source: Business Report – Florence de Vries