The minutes of a recent Scopa meeting on the finalisation of SAA’s 17-month business rescue process reveal that the cost to taxpayers of the business rescue was R243m.
The breakdown of business rescue payments made up until December 20 and presented to parliament by the Minister of Public Enterprises is as follows:
- Adamantem (Mr Dongwana’s firm): R28.2 m
- Matuson & Associates: R23.7m (Mr Matuson had not taken any fees for some months)
- Edward Nathan Sonnenberg (legal firm): R41.6m
- Alvarez & Marsal (aviation advisers): R61.1m
- PricewaterhouseCoopers: R38.7m
- Allen and Overy (legal adviser): R8.2m
- Letsema Consulting (valuation adviser): R2.6m
- Holstein Attorneys (legal adviser): R0.1m
- Thomas Bartos (legal adviser): R0.3m
- Redford Capital: R0.3m
- Norton Rose (legal adviser): R0.5m
- Bowmans (legal firm): R0.7m
- Astute Financial Services Exchange (business distress adviser): R1.7m
These amounts add up R207.5m. However, the Scopa minutes add that a further R35.5m of payments are expected to be made to finalise the business rescue process. This means that the final business rescue costs will tally up to R243m.
In the minutes, the shareholder (assumedly the DPE) notes that it has some hesitation about SAA’s business rescue practitioner, Siviwe Dongwana, being appointed as SAA’s Receiver, as the airline moves out of business rescue and into receivership. In the minutes, the shareholder states that it wanted to register its concerns even before the receivership began and that it was hoped that Dongwana would not get into the same kind of expensive exercise in terms of fees, as the business rescue had cost the state excessively. The shareholder would be looking at these costs very, very carefully
