De Ruyter ‘was a nightmare at Sasol, subverted the board’

The selection of Andre de Ruyter was slammed yesterday by a risk management expert who called it an “astoundingly inappropriate appointment”.

“He was a nightmare at Sasol,” Bart Henderson said.

“He made CEO David Constable’s life a living hell by subverting the board. He can take a giant share of the blame for the catastrophe that is Lake Charles. Not to mention creative reporting and other nasty tendencies.”

Lake Charles in Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico is Sasol’s biggest loss since its inception under De Ruyter in 2011, and later taken over by Constable.

Consisting of two gas-to-liquid plants, the scheme was estimated to have cost around R277 billion in 2013.

In August, Business Day reported earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (ebitda) were expected to be within a range of $150m and $300m in the year to end-June 2020, down from a previous forecast of $300m to $350m.

“Sasol has been grappling with major cost overruns at the Louisiana project, saying in July it had written down its assets in North America and Africa by R18.1bn,” Business Day reported.

“Sasol’s share price has been battered by the series of announcements, and has lost 14.72% so far in August.”

The news from Nampak was similarly bad, having lost more than 80% of its value over the past five years. It had lost another 1.63% yesterday.

According to Daily Maverick, aside from South Africa experiencing flat growth for the past 10 years, a year after De Ruyter joined Nampak the oil price went into free-fall, “which all but collapsed the economies of Angola and Nigeria – where Nampak had just built two big manufacturing plants”.

“These countries then imposed dollar rationing, preventing Nampak from repatriating profits and loan repayments for investment elsewhere. This starved the company of much-needed funds to service debt and put paid to further expansion, with predictably dire results for the group,” the Daily Maverick noted.

Henderson said the Nampak trajectory during his tenure reflected a shareholder-value bloodbath.

“Analysts attribute this in part to tougher competition and trading conditions. Probably a bit of truth in both. However, what can’t be ignored is he has hardly left either company in better shape,” Henderson said.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.