BUSINESS REPORTER
The National Social Security Authority says it will keep its interest in First Mutual Holdings Limited and will not dispose of shares in banks despite selling its 37.9% stake in ZB Financial Holdings Limited.
On Monday, NSSA disposed of its 56.6m shares in ZB stake to an unnamed buyer in a transaction valued at ZWL$1.6bn.
The sale had raised suspicion that NSSA would offload its stake in FML to the buyer.
But NSSA spokesperson Tendai Mutseyekwa told Business Times last night the pay as you go pension fund would keep its interest in banks and FML.
NSSA wholly owns National Building Society and has shareholding in CBZ and FBC Holdings. It sold its 1% stake in First Capital Bank.
“We will not be divesting from any of these banks and we will not divest from FML,” Mutseyekwa said.
He said NSSA had undertaken an exercise to consolidate its investee companies. This saw NSSA divesting from Fidelity Life and merging NicozDiamond and Tristar which is under FML.
Mutseyekwa said the consolidation exercise was now complete.
Monday’s acquisition of a stake in ZBFH comes despite shareholders still to resolve the restitution of Nicholas Vingirai’s shareholding in the group as compensation for the loss of Intermarket Holdings Limited (IHL).
IHL was bought by ZBFH with the transaction concluded in 2006.
This was after the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe had bailed out IHL’s subsidiaries and later converted the debt into equity under a High Court scheme of arrangement.
Vingirai told Business Times: “We can only confirm that there are restitution agreements which are still under implementation.
Those agreements preclude us from commenting on the matter beyond this at this stage.”
NSSA acting GM Arthur Manase last month told a local weekly the authority received more than ZWL$60m in dividends from its investees in the first half of the year.
ZBFH is a financial services group with interests in banking, insurance and property through Mashonaland Holdings.
