Gordhan is confident the SAA-Takatso deal will go ahead amid Novick’s resignation

Minister of Public Enterprises Pravin Gordhan has reacted to the resignation of Takatso Consortium’s board member Gidon Novick.

Novick was tasked by Takatso Consortium to negotiate for their bid to acquire 51% of South African Airways and his resignation has made headlines.

However, Gordhan remains upbeat that they will continue to hold talks with Takatso, saying the negotiations are at an advanced or sensitive stage.

Speaking in parliament after Novick’s resignation on Tuesday, minister Gordhan said the resignation of the Takatso board member will bring relief following talks that there could be a conflict of interest.

Media reports in the business sector in South Africa, the deal has been shrouded in secrecy, and not even the National Treasury, parliament, or the auditor-general have information regarding the transaction whether it was concluded, and at what price.

“Mr. Novick was a small and relatively minor partner in the consortium. Let’s not overplay whatever he has to say. That’s all I’m going to say,” he said on Tuesday.

“Just because he happens to be somebody who has experience somewhere in his past, as we all do in one respect or another, doesn’t discredit everybody else, nor does it mean that what he has to put on the table is something that one has to necessarily take extremely seriously.

Gordhan said he found it intriguing that Novick resigned from the Takatso board but not as a shareholder.

The former Finance minister, Gordhan, added that the resignation cannot be taken seriously and he remained confident the SAA-Takatso deal will go ahead smoothly.

“It’s like having your cake and eating it. You make your own judgment about that,” he told MPs.

“But if you are serious about this thing not being a viable proposition and having all the ‘questions and doubts about some of the issues that he is raising, why be part of something … and I go back to my first comment that this is a very competitive industry, one in which one wouldn’t mind having the other for lunch.

“If you look at both statements of the past 24 hours, there is a sense of relief as well because there was a potential conflict of interest developing, in the sense that if there was SAA information put in the same pot from which the other airline was also feeding off, the Chinese wall between them would disappear and that would create its own dynamics.

“They’ve got to sort out their problems as far as I’m concerned. We are quite confident that left to the normal processes, this will ultimately be a successful transaction.”

Meanwhile, BusinessTech Africa has learned that Novick is also the co-founder of LIFT, a competitor to SAA, and Takatso expressed its views on his resignation.

Takatso said its board had identified the potential conflicts of interest between the consortium and LIFT – leaving them with no options but to seek to control these conflicts throughout the course of the transaction.

“This includes the establishment of appropriate confidentiality and information management regimes in the spirit of maintaining fair competition in the South African airline market and in compliance with South Africa’s competition regulations,” Takatso said in a statement.