COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Sekunjalo Group's bank accounts to be reopened

The Competition Tribunal has granted interim relief to the Sekunjalo Group, preventing three banks from closing their bank accounts and ordering five others to reopen bank accounts that have already been closed.

In a statement, the tribunal said the interim relief will subsist for a period of six months, pending the conclusion of an investigation by the Competition Commission into a complaint regarding restrictive practices filed by the Sekunjalo Group against the banks in December.

A total of 36 applicants - including Dr Iqbal Survé, the Sekunjalo Group’s chairperson - brought the interim relief application against nine banks, claiming that the banks' conduct, in terminating the banking relationship with them or refusing to provide banking and payment services to them, constituted an "abuse of dominance and collusive conduct in contravention of the Competition Act".

The nine banks are Nedbank, Absa, FirstRand Bank, Sasfin Bank, Access Bank, Standard Bank, Mercantile Bank, a division of Capitec Bank, Bidvest Bank, and Investec Bank.

The banks had argued that Sekunjalo was a high-risk client that had been implicated in wrongdoing in the Mpati Commission of Inquiry's Report into the Public Investment Corporation. Survé and Sekunjalo have denied that the report made any adverse findings against them.

The applicants had asked the tribunal for an interim order prohibiting the closure of their existing banks accounts - where the accounts had not been terminated - and directing the banks to restore accounts that had already been closed.-Fin24

Criminals steal Starbucks customers' data

Starbucks Singapore said its customer database was breached online, with local media reporting that 200 000 people's information was stolen.

The coffee chain - a licensed Starbucks franchise owned by Hong Kong-based Maxim's Caterers - said in an email to customers that it had "discovered... some unauthorized access" to details such as names, gender, dates of birth, phone numbers and home addresses.

"Relevant authorities have been informed and Starbucks Singapore is assisting them on this matter," said the email seen by AFP.

The company said it was made aware of the breach on 13 September, and that no credit card details were taken as it does not store them. It urged customers to reset their passwords.

A public relations agency representing Starbucks Singapore told AFP it was "unable to disclose the number of affected customers".

The Straits Times said 200 000 customers' data was stolen and put on sale in an online forum on September 10. One copy of the database had already been sold for Sg$3 500 (R44 000), the newspaper added.

The city-state's Personal Data Protection Commission told AFP it had been notified about the incident and has reached out to Starbucks Singapore for more information. -Fin24





China splurging on Twitter

Even as China bars 1.4 billion citizens from Twitter, its local authorities are splurging on global advertising on the site, helping make the country the platform's fastest-growing overseas ad market and one of its largest non-US revenue sources.

A Reuters review of publicly available government tenders, budget documents and promoted tweets from 2020 to 2022 shows local authorities and Chinese Communist Party propaganda offices for cities, provinces and even districts across the country have flocked to Twitter to buy ads.

The promotions, often outsourced by local governments to state media, pitched local attractions, as well as cultural and economic achievements, to an international audience, and were permitted under an exemption to Twitter's ban on state-media advertising.

The review shows for the first time just how important China has become for Twitter, under pressure from investors to meet growth targets as its US business stalls. It comes with the company embroiled in a legal battle with Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who is attempting to back out of his unsolicited US$44 billion offer to buy Twitter.

Four sources told Reuters operations in China became a source of internal clashes between teams keen to maximise the sales opportunity and others concerned at the optics of doing business with state-affiliated entities at a time of growing tension between Beijing and Washington.

Twitter's dealings in China may come to the fore on Tuesday when the US Senate Judiciary committee holds a hearing to consider a whistleblower complaint filed by Twitter's former security chief Peiter Zatko. -Fin24