HILTON TARRANT: After two false starts in late Novemberand countless postponements in the weeks thereafter, trade in the MTN Zakhele BEE scheme will finally resume tomorrow.
That’s surely a relief for the more than 120 000 shareholders who would have probably wanted to trade ahead of the festive season.I spoke with Sydney Mhlarhi, founder and director of Tamela, the company behind the trading platform, earlier, and asked him if it was all systems go for tomorrow.
SYDNEY MHLARHI: Yes, the preparation has gone well since we received the approval from the regulatory authorities to proceed. The team has been busy working behind the scenes to get that going tomorrow morning.
HILTON TARRANT: Sydney, what’s taken so long? We obviously had the postponement in late November. There were a couple of attempted restarts in December, and we are now at the end of January, which is a whole month-and-a-bit later.
SYDNEY MHLARHI: Well, one, it’s a couple of things. The task at hand in terms of upgrading the system – firstly you had to go back to basics, take a step back and have a look and upgrade and make sure you test before you re-launch.
So throughout those kind of self-testing procedures the directors were not satisfied with the outcomes, and it had to be tested all over again until they were satisfied, including the systems auditors that were appointed.
So that process was completed round about December 17, and by that time we had been informed by the regulatory authorities that we had to re-engage with them following the suspension, so they could also satisfy themselves about the work that had been done behind the scenes to upgrade the system. But the Christmas holidays intervened and the engagement with the regulators only really started after the holidays this year.
HILTON TARRANT: Are there any other parties involved now in the trading system beyond those from November, or is this the same team?
SYDNEY MHLARHI: It’s the same team.
HILTON TARRANT: What happens tomorrow? Obviously there is a lot of pent-up demand out there, registered shareholders looking to trade their Zakhele shares. What happens if the system slows down? Should shareholders simply be patient?
SYDNEY MHLARHI: Well, we don’t anticipate that to be the case, but we do anticipate that the pent-up demand may result in both the call centre – people not getting through the first time that they’d like to get through, including on the website when they try to log in. But we don’t anticipate any failure of the system. Everybody will get an opportunity. A little patience will help. Everybody will get an opportunity to place their order over the initial trading hours, day one, as well as the subsequent trading days that are going to come.
HILTON TARRANT: Just to recap, how many registered Zakhele shareholders are there?
SYDNEY MHLARHI: There are 121 000 shareholders. Not all of them are registered to trade as we speak. So only about 24 000 are registered to trade.
HILTON TARRANT: Thanks to Sydney Mhlarhi. A lot of attention on that MTN Zakhele website ahead of trade starting tomorrow at nine o’clock. Mtn.co.za is the URL for that website, and we’ll be watching that very closely.