COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

MTN Ghana could cut off some subscribers

MTN Ghana, which is Africa's largest mobile operator's third-most lucrative market, is bracing for the potential deactivation of a quarter of its subscriber's sim cards on Thursday, as it looks to comply with directive from regulators in that country over biometric registration.

The directive from Ghana's National Communications Authority concerns deactivating those sim cards that have completed the first stage of a sim registration process, or linking of their Ghana Card ID to their sim card, but not the second stage, which concerns biometric capture.

As of November 26, about 22.1 million MTN Ghana subscribers had completed the first stage while 16.4 million had completed the bio-capture phase. This means 5.7 million subscribers would be eligible for deactivation on 1 December. MTN said on Tuesday it was committed to the registration exercise to build an accurate customer database to help minimize fraud in the country.

MTN said it will provide an update on Friday on the effect, including on revenue, of the process, as well as initiatives to re-register subscribers. All deactivated cards can be reactivated within 6 months, or a deadline of the end of May 2023.

MTN Ghana accounted for just over a tenth, or R9.9 billion, of the mobile operators revenue in its half-year to end-June, putting it behind Nigeria and SA. The business has also been dealing with the implications of a new 1.5% levy on electronic money transfer services introduced in May, which has prompted it to cut its transaction fees by a quarter to cushion the blow.

Sim registration rules have also been a headache in Nigeria, with the mobile operator saying in October the rules prompted a 57 000 fall in subscribers in its third quarter to end September, though over a nine month period, they were still up 10% to 74.1 million.-Fin24

JSE censures Nutritional for series of failures

The JSE has publicly censured AltX-listed cannabis firm Nutritional Holdings over a string of failures related to how it informed shareholders over developments at the company, including letting them think for months that a subsidiary had been placed into business rescue.

The firm, whose shares were suspended in May 2021 due to late financials and it is under the threat of termination, while it also faces a court battle in January that could see it liquidated.

The JSE on Monday said it had imposed the censures for not releasing information that was price-sensitive, not observing the highest level of care in disseminating information, and failure to publish reviewed results.

In February 2021, Nutritional had informed shareholders of a decision to dispose of its subsidiary, dry foods manufacturer Nutritional Food, but not only did it have to correct a date contained in that announcement about two hours later, the next day it informed shareholders its board had "unanimously" voted to place the subsidiary into business rescue, or a form of bankruptcy protection.

Then, in May 2021, the company informed shareholders that the resolution had been passed by a majority, not unanimously, and "technically" it had not been placed into business rescue in February.

The company also came under fire for "false and misleading" statements related to the launch of a cannabis cryptocurrency, Cannacrypt, which it announced in a letter to shareholders dated March 2021. Shareholders were being offered 20 000 coins at a launch price of R1, and were also told it would exhibit triple-digit growth year on year.-Fin24

Meta fined R4.7 billion

Meta Platforms was slapped with a €265 million (R4.7 biillion) fine for failing to prevent the leak of the personal data of more than half a billion users of its Facebook service.

The Irish Data Protection Commission, the main privacy watchdog for Meta in the European Union, levied the fine following a probe that found the social-media company had failed to apply strict safeguards required under the bloc’s sweeping General Data Protection Regulation.

On top of the fine — the third-biggest under GDPR — the watchdog ordered Meta’s Irish unit to make sure its processing complies with the law, according to an emailed statement on Monday.

The Irish authority is the lead watchdog for some of Silicon Valley’s biggest tech firms that have set up an EU base in the country, including Meta. It opened its probe following revelations that "a collated dataset of Facebook personal data" had been published on the internet. Personal information on 533 million Facebook users worldwide reemerged on a hacker website last year, including their phone numbers and email addresses.

The investigation looked into "Facebook Search, Facebook Messenger Contact Importer and Instagram Contact Importer tools in relation to processing carried out by Meta" between May 2018 and September 2019, the data protection commission said.

The social network has previously said the data is old and that the problem had been found and fixed in 2019.-Fin24

Ma-Afrika Hotels headed to the ConCourt

Ma-Afrika Hotels, the first company that took insurers to court over lockdown claims and won, has now fired another legal salvo, this time against its landlord.

The hospitality group, with hotels in Stellenbosch, has launched an application for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court against an eviction order brought by its landlord.

The company is arguing that the pandemic, exacerbated by the government's lockdown restrictions, made it impossible for Ma-Afrika to pay its rent during that period.

Ma-Afrika's landlord, Venezia Trust, took the hotel group to court in February 2021, seeking an eviction order because it didn't pay rent for a guest house during the pandemic. The guesthouse did not earn any revenue during the lockdown period from 26 March to 20 September 2020, as it had no guests.

Ma-Afrika had a 10-year lease agreement with Venezia Trust for its Rivierbos Guest House. But the Western Cape High Court dismissed Venezia Trust's application for eviction, and the landlord took the matter to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA).

The trust says that Ma-Afrika's rental was in arrears to the tune of R872 266 by the end of December 2020. It continued to service the mortgage bond repayments to avert foreclosure of the guesthouse.

The SCA ruled that even though the lockdown regulations up to 20 September 2020 impacted Ma-Afrika's ability to pay rent for the guesthouse, restrictions on the guesthouse's ability to trade changed after that. It referred the claim for arrear rental back to the Western Cape High Court for determination earlier this month.-Fin24