Africa-Press – Namibia. THE South African high court has restrained the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) from suspending Trustco Holdings Group from the bourse, pending a September 2022 review.
This was announced by the JSE on Monday, while Trustco celebrated its victory over the JSE.
“Trustco finally saw justice prevail as its urgent interdict to restrain the JSE from suspending its listing was upheld today,” reads a company statement issued on Monday.
The two entities have been fighting each other over the application of accounting standards, after it was proposed that Trustco had inflated profits by some N$2,1 billion.
Towards the end of 2020, the JSE found Truscto did not comply with the listings requirements in relation to its annual financial statements for the year ended 31 March 2019 and interim results for the six months ended 30 September 2019.
The bourse then directed Trustco to take steps to rectify its non-compliance.
Trustco has, however, to date remained adamant that its books are in order, and the company would not restate them to remove alleged accounting errors as instructed by the JSE.
Refusing to correct the books, Trustco also challenged the JSE on the transactions in question, which ended up at the Financial Services Tribunal.
The company has also told the market that its scuffle with the JSE is not because it committed any fraud, misconduct or any wrongdoing, but due to an accounting interpretation issue.
The company further stated that it has also never received any bad audit reports for the last 29 years.
According to it, all of its financial statements as published contained correct financial statements that are reasonably presented in line with international financial reporting standards.
The tribunal had also dismissed Trustco’s application to appeal against the JSE’s decision, upon which the company approached the South African High Court.
In its submissions to the courts, Trustco said the decision to suspend it was made by a person who lacked the authority to make such a decision.
Trustco said the JSE was breaking its own listing requirements and that the Financial Services Tribunal was composed of a retired judge, a senior counsel and an attorney who lacked the required accounting knowledge.
The company has also maintained that the accounting reporting standards application was done with the advise of JSE recognised accountants.
Trustco said Monday’s high court ruling means the JSE would not suspend it from the bourse, and there would be no need to implement the correction of the alleged accounting errors.
Meanwhile, the JSE issued a statement, saying the interdict and the event’s before the judment were the correct course of action from the courts.
The JSE said Trustco’s urgent application was on 28 July argued before judge Nicolene Janse van Nieuwenhuizen, who reserved judgement.
The JSE said it agreed not to suspend Trustco until the court had given judgement out of respect for the judge.
Janse van Nieuwenhuizen on Monday ordered that the JSE be interdicted and restrained from implementing the tribunal’s ruling and the suspension decision, pending the outcome of the review application.
This review application is set to be heard on 5 September.
Trustco said the JSE was ordered to pay the costs of the urgent court application, including the costs of two counsels.
Both entities have said they would publish an announcement regarding the review application.
Trustco’s shares were trading at N$0,42 on Monday, down from over N$1,70 reported at the beginning of this year.
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