Vultures feast on Ellerines carcass

FINALLY, there is a (partial) answer to what will become of African Bank’s retail albatross, Ellerines.

Lewis Group said on Friday it had put in an offer to buy the Beares chain and other stores from Ellerines, which sank into business rescue days before the bank imploded in August.

On Friday too, furniture retailer Coricraft revealed it had bought Dial-a-Bed from Ellerines for an “undisclosed sum” after a “competitive bidding process”. This would double its 62 stores to almost 120.

Lewis’s stock rallied 4.1%, even though the company did not say how much it would pay for Beares. Still, the jump did not erase its 9% fall this year.

The collapse of Ellerines, which employs 7 060 people at 940 stores, raised huge question marks over the viability of the heavily overtraded industry.

Meanwhile, African Bank’s curator, Tom Winterboer, said he had applied for a new banking licence for the collapsed bank. “It is a tough road but things are starting to look up.”

But the new-look African Bank will, in all likelihood be a completely different animal to the microlending giant that stumbled into curatorship under a mountain of bad debts.

First, the new bank may offer the same services as a traditional retail bank, including taking deposits. The African Bank of old, however, only offered unsecured loans.

Winterboer said a new board would be installed by the end of this month — with new people.

“To give the bank a new start, you probably need new people. That is what we are aiming for,” he said.