Lifestyle shareholders approve delisting from the ZSE

Published: 10 June 2013

HARARE - Lifestyle Holdings shareholders voted in favour of a Scheme of Arrangement which shall see them owning shares in a Mauritius-based company with Lifestyle expected to delist from the ZSE, at an extraordinary general held this morning.

Acting Chairman Rugare Chidembo said the scheme is meant to enable the business to access international funding from investors concerned about Zimbabwe's country risk.

Financial advisor to the scheme and also an executive at Lifestyle, Alexander Gonese said that the Mauritian company, TN Harlequin International was set up by the directors as a vehicle to raise funding for the group.

"It currently doesn't have any shareholders. By voting for the scheme the shareholders will become the shareholder of TNHI and they will not be any dilution as they will assume the same shareholding they have in Lifestyle," he said.

TNHI will be the sole shareholder in Lifestyle Holdings.

"Once Lifestyle is now owned by TNHI, we will be able to set up operations in South Africa which will be owned directly by the Mauritian company," Gonese added.

"We will use the two vehicles to raise funding to finance the operations of TN South Africa. The SA based retail operations, after being capitalised will be able to buy stock from Zimbabwe operations, that's how the capital will flow to the Zimbabwean operations."

He said as management they have already started negotiations with prospective financiers who have indicated their willingness to finance operations in South Africa and the Mauritian-based vehicle.

Commenting on the recent reports of branch closures, Gonese said this is a result of a change in operations after the bank was demerged.

"We had built the business and the branch network around the bank but the new shareholder of TN Bank, Econet, has a different thrust focusing mainly on technology related banking services," he said.

He went on to say the health of the operations is still good adding that shareholders should know that even before the demerger TN Harlequin was the major contributor to revenue and profitability of the group.

Earlier on the company secretary Chairmaine Daniels had told the meeting that the high court urgent application on Wednesday 13 March filed by the Securities Commission of Zimbabwe and the ZSE had been ruled to be "not an urgent matter" paving way for Lifestyle to proceed with its meeting.

- zfn