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Pretoria – North Gauteng High Court Judge Ronel Tolmay on Friday threw out Vardospan’s urgent court application.
Vardospan - headed by Hamza Farooqui and Salim Essa, close associates of the controversial Gupta family – filed the urgent application on Monday to review and set aside the alleged failure by registrar of banks and South African Reserve Bank (SARB) deputy governor Kuben Naidoo and Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan to determine its application and grant it permission to buy a majority stake in Habib Overseas Bank and be registered as the controlling company.
The agreement Vardospan made with Pitcairns Finance on August 31 2016 to purchase a majority stake was based on condition that they receive regulatory approval by January 31 2017, extended to March 31 2017. The Competition Commission had approved the merger.
Tolmay said there was still room for Vardospan to negotiate an extension. She concluded that the urgency was “self-created”.
“The matter could not have been finalised today… Waiting for the eleventh hour to bring the application, the applicants brought their own demise,” she said.
The application was dismissed with costs.
On Thursday, Tolmay had already mentioned that the urgent application may have been filed too late for the court to consider.
READ: Judge says urgent application against Gordhan, SARS may be too late
Vardospan’s advocate Arnold Subel argued that Monday was an appropriate day to file the urgent application, as this is when Vardospan realised the matter wasn’t going to be finalised by its deadline.
Gordhan’s advocate Matthew Chaskalson said there is no evidence that the purchase agreement is on Friday.
In addition, he said an applicant can't create its own urgency by setting up a deadline the minister and authorities must then abide by. He added that Vardospan should have brought this application months ago.
READ: Habib Bank urgent court bid is self-created – Treasury, SARB
Advocate Gilbert Marcus, representing the SARB, said this was a takeover of a bank and so the regulators needed to “exercise the utmost caution”. He added that they need to guarantee the stability of the banking sector and avoid historic events, like the collapse of African Bank.
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