Sibanye platinum bids win Competition Tribunal approval

Sibanye CEO, Neal Froneman, and Anglo American Platinum CEO, Chris Griffith. Pic: Martin Rhodes.

SOUTH Africa’s Competition Tribunal gave its vote of approval to Sibanye’s proposed takeover of Rustenburg Platinum Mines from Anglo American Platinum (Amplats) as well as a bid for Aquarius Platinum provided retrenchments were minimised.

The two transactions are valued at about R9.5bn and will catapult Sibanye Gold – to be renamed Sibanye Resources – into a fully fledged precious metals producer. It will add 1.15 million ounces a year of platinum group metals to its 1.6 million oz of gold output, as forecast for 2016.

The transactions were thrown into doubt earlier this week after the Competition Commission said it was concerned Sibanye would retrench people in order to make the transactions commercially viable. The commission is mandated in terms of the public interest to apply conditions before approving certain corporate activity.

However, the commission said in a statement today that in terms of the purchase of Rustenburg Mines planned retrenchments had to be limited to 250 staff.

“In the case of Sibanye’s merger with Rustenburg Platinum mines that retrenchments are limited to those identified, which are expected to be about 250 staff,” the commission said.

“In the event that the potential consolidation does occur in 24 months following the implementation date, any retrenchments as a result of the consolidation shall be limited to 260 employees.

“In the case of Sibanye’s merger with Aquarius only 14 retrenchments are expected, and the conditions stipulate that no further employees can be retrenched,” it said.

Neal Froneman, CEO of Sibanye Gold, said the commission had made a good decision. “We had a good hearing in which the commission asked all the right questions and were very attentive,” he said.

Froneman argued that following the demerger of Gold Fields assets which had created the basis for Sibanye Gold in 2012 employment numbers at the gold mines had been reduced to 32,000 but had since been increased back to 42,000.

“To object to the retrenchment of some employees would have been the wrong way to look at our bid for Rustenburg Platinum Mines because we are actually protecting 13,000 jobs,” said Froneman.