New Age2.png Funder's action 'illegal' Body cautions Futuregrowth about breach of competition laws Bernard Sathekge, The New Age, Johannesburg, 7 September 2016 An umbrella body for fund managers told Futuregrowth, which last week announced it would cease lending to South Africa's major state owned enterprises (SOEs), it had destroyed documents copied to it on the matter in fear of being in contravention of competition legislation. This is a damning response by the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (Asisa) to Futuregrowth's decision that sent the markets into a tailspin. In a letter to Futuregrowth CEO Andrew Canter Asisa sought to clarify its position on the matter after the industry body was drawn into the controversy. "It must be clear that Asisa deals with industry matters. This constitutes comment and management with the policy maker, regulators and other stakeholders on issues relating to policy, legislation and regulation which affects the industry and all Asisa members," it said. Asisa told Canter the involvement of the organisation in Futuregrowth's decision could be illegal. The letter said: "The relationship between a fund manager and its clients is one of a business and contractual nature. It would not only be inappropriate but possibly illegal in terms of competition law for Asisa to be involved in such matters." It said the organisation had "destroyed" a set of questions sent to SOEs, on which it was copied. "As regards the other fund managers, if you copied them on the list of questions, it would be inappropriate and possibly a contravention of the Competition Act for them to give input. We would strongly recommend that they destroy all record of this list if they have received this," Asisa said. The body said attempts to involve other fund managers in Futuregrowth's meeting with SOEs would be "deemed collusive or restrictive behaviour in terms of the Competition Act". Minister of Public Enterprises Lynne Brown said in a statement: "We note the principle position taken by Asisa, where they caution Futuregrowth Asset Management against inviting other fund managers to support its decision, as doing so will be deemed collusive or restrictive behaviour in terms of the Competition Act." Brown also said that Old Mutual, the holding company of Futuregrowth, had distanced itself from the decision. Asisa operates as a non-profit company and is empowered by a mandate from an industry that manages assets of nearly R8.6 trillion. Its strategic purpose is to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders in the financial services industry. Futuregrowth refused to take calls from our sister TV channel ANN7 which originated this story. From: http://tnaepaper.co.za/DRIVE/main%20edition/07092016/epaperpdf/1.pdf __________ Information from ESET NOD32 Antivirus, version of virus signature database 14082 (20160907) __________ The message was checked by ESET NOD32 Antivirus. http://www.eset.com -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "YCLSA Discussion Forum" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/yclsa-eom-forum/002101d208e5%240fa94450%242efbccf0%24%40com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
