Sisa Ngebulana’s Rebosis in talks with potential savior investor amid bankruptcy fears

Rebosis, a real estate investment trust company owned by South African businessman Sisa Ngebulana, is speaking with investors about a deal to rescue it from the brink of bankruptcy.

On April 7, Rebosis announced on the Stock Exchange News Service (SENS) that it was negotiating with local and offshore institutions and pension funds.

“If it ends normally (the transaction), it could radically change Rebosis’s financial matrix and embody shareholder value,” Eminetra reported.

According to Eminetra, the end of the 2020 fiscal year saw the company’s net liabilities rise close to its total assets. While its net liabilities were R9.5 billion ($651 million), its total assets were only R13.5 billion ($925 million). Also, its loan-to-value ratio reached 75.7 percent in 2019 and 72.4 percent at the end of the fiscal year in August 2020.

Rebosis has faced debt crises before the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, its shares lost almost 90 percent of their value due to its failed investment in New Frontier Properties, a real estate investment trust company registered on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Business Live reported.

That same year, Rebosis also considered delisting from the JSE and going private if a planned merger with the state-backed Delta Property Fund failed.

Ngebulana is the executive chairperson and sole owner of Billion Group Limited, a South Africa-based multibillion-rand property company established in 1998. He later founded Rebosis in 2010, which became the first black-managed and substantially black-held property fund to be listed on the JSE. He has developed several regional shopping malls in South Africa. He is an attorney of the High Court of South Africa.