Billionaire businessman Chris Kirubi. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Summary
- In February this year, Tiger Brands and Chris Kirubi announced that they had reached a deal in which the businessman would buy back Tiger Brands’ interest in the company.
- The transaction raised questions about the future of Tiger Brands products that are currently sold by Haco.
- The Johannesburg-listed firm now says it has no intention of completely quitting the Kenyan market.
South African firm Tiger Brands has said
it plans to keeping its products on Kenyan shelves even after
concluding sale of its majority stake in Haco back to billionaire
businessman Chris Kirubi.
Tiger Brands acquired 51 per cent stake in Haco in 2008.
In
February this year, however, the South African firm and Mr Kirubi
announced that they had reached a deal in which the businessman would
buy back Tiger Brands’ interest in the company.
The transaction raised questions about the future of Tiger Brands products that are currently sold by Haco.
The Johannesburg-listed firm now says it has no intention of completely quitting the Kenyan market.
“Tiger
Brands expects to continue to trade its other products in the Kenyan
market either with (our) current partner or other partners,” Tiger
Brands said in a statement to the Business Daily.
Mr
Kirubi in a telephone interview last week declined to comment on the
future of Tiger Brands products in Kenya, only saying that negotiations
were still ongoing.
Haco manufactures and distributes consumer products in licence deals with a number of international companies.
Tiger
Brands products sold by Haco in Kenya include Purity (baby food),
Tastic (rice and spaghetti), Ingram (personal care), and All Gold
(ketchup).
In February Tiger Brands said that the
decision to exit Haco came after a realisation that the Kenyan firm’s
strategy of manufacturing and distributing products under licence was
not “aligned” with the South African firm’s model of “owning leading
FMCG brands”.
“Taking
into account these factors, it was decided that Haco would be better
positioned under local Kenyan leadership and control…. This has
culminated in the local partner making an offer for Tiger Brands’ 51 per
cent shareholding at a price that was considered fair,” said Tiger
Brands in a February statement.
The sale of Tiger Brands’ stake in Haco also came two years after the unearthing of accounting irregularities at Haco.
Tiger Brands later estimated that the fraud had cost the company R50 million.
No comments :
Post a Comment