GRi Press Review 14 - 08
- 2003
Randgold confirms merger moves
"Terrorists activities" on the increase in Kumasi
Lawyers disagree with judge on indecent exposure
Whistle Blowers Act approved by Cabinet
Negotiations on university fees still on-going
Hard Times Await ICU Boss
Randgold confirms merger moves
Accra (Greater Accra) 14 August 2003 - The Board of Directors of Randgold Resources Limited has confirmed that it has submitted an indicative merger proposal to the board of Ashanti Goldfields Company Limited. This envisages the acquisition of the issued share capital of Ashanti through a scheme of arrangement at a proposed ratio of one Randgold ordinary share or American Depository Receipt for every two Ashanti ordinary shares.
The announcement made late last Friday in New York boosted Ashanti to an 11% gain for the day. The Chronicle has learned that the delay in Randgold Resources' counter bid for Ashanti Gold was due to regulatory hurdle they had to clear. It also proposed to retain the Ashanti name conditional, amongst other things, on further due diligence.
The proposed ratio of exchange values Ashanti at $11.47 per share based on Thursday's closing prices on the New York Stock Exchange. That is a 40% premium to the Ashanti closing price of August 7, and rounds out the offer to $1.53bn.
No cash component was included as speculated previously. These discussions are at an early stage and may or may not lead to a formal proposal being made or an agreement being reached, a source close to Ashanti revealed. Should Randgold be victorious it must pay a $15m break fee to AngloGold.
Details are sketchy but it is believed that Randgold will raise AngloGold's announced offer price by $162m. Randgold's basic price is 33% higher than AngloGold's offer, which was revealed late on August 4. Within seconds of Randgold's confirmation that it had formally notified Ashanti of its intentions, investors were voting.
An astonishing 1 million Randgold shares changed hands on Friday, virtually all of them in the final 30 minutes of the New York session. 12% was wiped off the stock, which was fortunate to be cushioned by higher gold prices that sustained it above the $20 resistance line.
Ashanti stockholders made hay, trading over 4 million shares and bidding the stock up to $9.10, an 11% gain on the day. AngloGold was none the worse for wear, adding nearly $1 in the final hour of trade on heavy volumes.
The net result was an 80-cent gap, or $101m, between the closing bids, compared with an opening spread Randgold faces blunt skepticism among professional investors about its capacity to complete the transaction without taking its own life in the process. "A digestive mishap," would be an appropriate epitaph in the event.
Despite the blessing of Lonmin and Ashanti's board, a pledge to spend nearly $600m revamping Ghana's flagship mine, Randgold has managed to wedge itself into the running in a breathtaking way. Much has been made of the red herring that Lonmin would like cash for its 27.6% legacy stake in Ashanti. The suggestion is that Randgold could make good on that, consuming more than $350m in cash in the process.
However, Lonmin is subject to American securities laws that preclude such preferential treatment. That leaves AngloGold in the stronger position with Lonmin that is converting the latter's stake into 3.7% of the larger entity would be a bearable overhang threat and cash can be realised quite easily, thanks to AngloGold's liquidity. In that vein, merger specialists say, "don't discount a deal between Lonmin and Anglo American to trade that bloc of scrip".
For Randgold, Lonmin's stake would convert to 19.4%, a nasty overhang given assurances that the shares will be liquidated.
A source close to the AngloGold bid says a determination of real economic value will be the decider and, by his reckoning, Randgold is a loser on a simple formula - add its market value to that of Ashanti, add in synergies, and deduct transaction costs.
No figures have yet been supplied that could be compared with AngloGold's, but it is plain that Randgold will struggle to maintain a premium price on a bottom line basis without raising its offer. That could trigger further investor defection which would initiate a death spiral requiring the ratio of exchange to be raised, which in turn leads to worse dilution. - Chronicle
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
"Terrorists activities" on the increase in Kumasi
Kumasi (Ashanti Region) 14 August 2003 - Residents of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city, are worried over the resurgence of what amounts to terrorist activities being perpetrated by a network of a youth gang called Al-Queeda/Taleban network.
The modus operandi of the gang involves the forceful seizure of mobile phones, monies and other valuable items from their owners and threats on the lives of those dare challenge them. "The Chronicle" has gathered that a number of people have sustained severe injuries at the hands of these gangs through the attacks.
Painstaking findings by "Chronicle" have established that people involved in the violent activities of the network are aged between 16 and 30 years. The group had a field day in carrying out their dreadful activities until recently when the police became aware of them.
In the past two weeks the police have mounted a sustained hunt for the members of the gang. Their efforts yielded positive results, according to the PRO of the Regional Police Headquarters, Gideon Boateng, who confirmed the massive trial of the gang by the police.
He said a suspected member of the gang, Fuseini Gazali, alias Mambo, was arrested on 5 August by patrol personnel from the narcotics Unit at Tinka near Alabar, a suburb of Kumasi. Mambo who had a German made pistol in his possession is in police custody pending further investigations.
Boateng assured the public that the police would do everything to nip the activities of the group in the bud. - Chronicle
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Lawyers disagree with judge on indecent exposure
Accra (Greater Accra) 14 August 2003 - Two Accra lawyers, Nana Oye Lithur of the Law Trust Company and Augustine Niber, at the Center for Public Interest Law have expressed amazement at a statement attributed to a Berekum circuit court judge that sought to suggest that females could be prosecuted for the way they dress.
They insist that any such move would be a complete breach of the Constitution and "extremely ridiculous." Niber wondered whether the learned judge knows that "there is no law in of our any statutory books that prohibits indecent dressing" and suggested that the man may be using the law to mask his own weaknesses.
When the Network Herald sought their views on the position of the judge on indecent dressing, Niber pointed out that the Criminal Code only prevent indecent exposure "when for example a football player stripes naked in a jubilant mode on the field of play such that certain parts that are considered private are exposed to the full glare of the spectators".
"These however do not include wearing short skirts and certain dresses that exposes one's thigh to the public", he noted. He submitted that since there is no such law, any attempt to arrest ladies or young girls whose way of dressing tend to be so suggestive as court trouble for the "morally weak and bankrupt" would be a complete violation of their human rights.
But there was some salvation for the learned judge. Niber was of the view that if the situation is as serious as the judge thinks, then it is important that he advocates a law with a prescribed punishment and not the arrests and prosecution of persons when he knows so well there is no known law on such a matter.
According to Nana Oye who simply described the judges position "extremely ridiculous," Ghana is a signatory to numerous international laws and Convention that ensures that certain fundamental human rights which include the right to bodily integrity are observed and pointed out that people can wear whatever clothes they deem fit. "I can wear whatever I want to wear and nobody can punish me for that, since it does not infringe on any body's rights".
She viewed the position of the circuit court judge as very myopic especially because it offends Article 21 of the constitution, which recognizes among other things the right to move freely in the country and dress according to your taste. On the probability that an "indecently" dressed lady could attract rapist, Nana Oye felt it is wrong for people to think that in the days when women wore the traditional "Slit and Kaba," there weren't rape cases in the country.
She stated that even though rape cases were rampant in those days, embarrassment and the fear of stigmatization prevented the victims from making their plight public knowledge and thanked the Ghanaian media for championing the cause of women.
Nana Oye, a Women's Rights Advocate who recently began an action against the National Media Commission and the Government at an Accra High Court for what she described as unfair representation of female on the governing boards of the state owned media houses advised that it is about time we stopped thinking it is only the female sex who turn on their male counterparts with certain kinds of dresses.
"You think that the ladies are not turned on when they see their male counterparts with exposed muscles and other vital parts of their bodies," she asked. "What is needed urgently is research and the development of a scheme that ensures behavioral change of people." - Network Herald
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Whistle Blowers Act approved by Cabinet
Sekondi (Western Region) 14 August 2003 - Cabinet has given approval for the enactment of a Whistle Blowers Act to encourage people with information on corruption to report to the appropriate agencies for the law to take its cause.
The Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Papa Owusu Ankomah, disclosed this at Sekondi in the Western Region. He was addressing the Sekondi Youth Congress of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
A Whistle Blower is someone who tells people in authority or public about dishonest or illegal practices in business and government. The passage of the Whistle Blower's Act by Parliament will be the fulfillment of yet another promise by the government.
The government on assumption of office promised a zero tolerance for corruption and assured that it would set up an accountability office at the office of the President, which has already been realized. In addition it assured that it will table before Parliament a Whistle Blowers Act to encourage people to volunteer information on corruption practices. - Ghanaian Times
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Negotiations on university fees still on-going
Accra (Greater Accra) 14 August 2003 - Negotiations are still on going about the fees to be paid by university students this year. The Minister of State in charge of Tertiary Education, Ms Elizabeth Ohene, disclosed this in an interview in Accra on Tuesday.
She said, "Things are getting difficult because the university authorities have already presented their budget and they have to go by it, hence the need for negotiations."
Ms Ohene said that for the fees to be reduced to the level demanded by the students, there was the need for changes in the curricula of the institutions. "A course that should take two years to complete, would have to be paid in two years would be stretched over the three years would be stretched over the three years period, and a computer laboratory to be built in six months would have to be built in a year," she said.
In recent times the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has strongly protested against the fees the universities are demanding.
Nathaniel Kwaw, Secretary of NUGS, said that even though there should be cost sharing, the average Ghanaian parent was already overburdened and could not pay the more than ¢6m being demanded as fees for one child. Already, the freshmen have started paying their fees for the various programmes. - Ghanaian Times
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Accra (Greater Accra) 14 August 2003 - Napoleon Kpoh, who was recently retained, as the General Secretary of the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICU) of the TUC is likely to face serious financial crisis in the near future. This is because local union members who decided to break away from the ICU at the conference over the weekend have decided not to pay their dues for the month of August and beyond.
The Free Press newspaper says the Ghana Commercial Bank alone pays an amount of ¢80m monthly dues to the ICU. This means that the ICU's means of survival is gradually dying out.
Others who have warned Kpoh to keep off their dues include the Agricultural Development Bank, Ghana Cement Company, Barclays Bank Ghana and the La Community Bank.
The rest are Bank of Ghana, Merchant Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO), State Insurance Company, Oyko Europat and the Ghana National Procurement Agency.
The breakaway faction alleged that because Kpoh knew he would lose the seat to Francis Davor, he deliberately maintained the Union's old constitution, which made it impossible for Davor to contest for the position. - Free Press
Send your comments to viewpoint@ghanareview.com