Pepkor execs target Wiese for Steinhoff damages

New court papers show that a group of senior executives of Pepkor Holdings intends to seek compensation directly from the company’s previous chair, Christo Wiese, due to damages they incurred as a result of the Steinhoff debacle. A BusinessLIVE report says this was according to the testimony of Dawie van Niekerk, the previous chief operating officer of Tekkie Town, a business Pepkor acquired from Steinhoff in 2017. Pepkor executives were asked – at the request of Wiese – to exchange their shares in the business for Steinhoff shares, when Wiese decided to merge Pepkor with the furniture retailer in what became the country’s largest merger in 2015. Some of these shares were held in a company called Business Ventures Investments (BVI). In 2018, Pepkor provided a guarantee to banks that had lent money to BVI that was used to acquire more Steinhoff shares. Pepkor argued in papers filed last month in the Western Cape High Court that Van Niekerk and four other former Tekkie Town employees were in breach of their restraint of trade clauses in launching a rival, called Tekkie.