TAURAI MANGUDHLA
Zimbabwe Stock Exchange-listed sugar producer Hippo Valley Estates has dumped Deloitte & Touche (Zimbabwe) as its auditors effective from its next financial year amid growing pressure from shareholders.
Shareholders said the audit firm should be ditched on the grounds it slept on the job while the company was being prejudiced of millions through malpractices.
“Shortly in the next months the year is ending and we need to start the audit process.
It was just impossible for us to find new auditors that will then come on the back of restated financials and want to understand the restated financials that have already exhausted and over expended our financial resources,” Hippo Valley chairman Dan Morokane told Business Times.
“We have explained to our shareholders that we came from a very painful 12 or 15 months, we spent time an financial resources re-looking at our financials back three years and we have had to do the half year results, all these are required for us to be in compliance with regulatory requirements.
“So we have asked shareholders to agree that we reappoint Deloitte for the last time to do the audit they had to do after this current year-end and then we will have new financial auditors in time for the next financial years.”
This comes after a PwC investigation instigated by Hippo Valley’s South African parent Tongaat Hulett’s unearthed internal accountability and governance shortcomings that implicated certain executives.
The shenanigans cost the company millions financially and its reputation, but Morokane believes the company is now on the path to recovery after its shares, which were suspended last August from trading on the ZSE, resumed trading on the local bourse on February 17 upon meeting all the requirements.
The shares were suspended pending investigations by parent Tongaat and publication of 2019 annual results.
Morokane told Business Times that some shareholders had sought clarity before this AGM as they should on matters that they picked up in our financial reporting and everythingelse.
“We engaged, we were transparent with them,” Morokane said.
He said the board has not held back on any of the information that was relevant from the investigations that we have done, we have been very explicit around the actions that we are taking and the strengthening of governance.
Shareholders at the AGM were also told that the board intends to comply with ZSE requirements on makeup and composition of executive and non-executive directors.
“We have commenced work and we are at the same time strengthening governance structures of the board and putting in committees that were not there before, so that it is not vulnerable as we found out,” he said.
In the outlook, Morokane said systems have to improve.
“There is a lot of work to do, some of our shareholders have visited our facilities to reacquaint themselves with our operations.
“They have left premises comfortable that there is valuable business proposition here for them, they are staying on as shareholders; none of them has jumped the ship,” he said.
The company plans to introduce an investor day on its calendar in line with international standards.
