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Johannesburg - The Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) is engaging with MTN’s sponsor Deutsche Securities over how the mobile network announced a fine in Nigeria.
On Monday, MTN announced that it’s facing a $5.2bn in Nigeria for failing to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered subscribers in that country.
However, MTN’s JSE SENS announcement of the fine came at 14:24 on Monday October 26 even though a story about the record fine was reported in Nigeria’s Technology Times on Sunday, October 25.
"The JSE is having focused conversation with the sponsors in the interest of MTN shareholders," a spokesperson for the stock exchange told Fin24 in an emailed statement.
The way that MTN made the announcement also prompted Sycamore Fund’s Ashraf Mohamed on Monday to ask questions about insider trading on BusinessDay TV’s Stock Watch programme.
“I was sitting this morning (Monday, 26 October) at 11am and saying it’s trading volume was the highest of all the top 40 shares and if you look at the traded value, it was quite significant and there was no news flow,” he said.
“And literally, just over an hour later the SENS announcement was made.
“So, somebody certainly went in and sold those shares out with insider knowledge. My view is that if the JSE doesn’t investigate, then actually I’d be surprised,” he said.
MTN spokespeople were not available for comment on Tuesday.
