Adapt IT shares plunge on damaging claims against CEO
Adapt IT CEO Sbu Shabalala
Shares in Adapt IT plunged more than 10% on Monday after claims were published at the weekend that CEO Sbu Shabalala hired armed thugs to beat up the partner of his estranged wife, Neo.
The share price fell as much as 11.3% to R6.28 soon after markets opened in Johannesburg. At the time of writing, they were off 9.8% at R6.39 apiece, 11c below the all-cash offer to buy the company from Canada’s Volaris Group.
For weeks, the counter has been trading above the Volaris offer price as investors bet that either Volaris or Adapt IT’s other suitor, Huge Group, which is pursuing an all-share deal, will offer more.
Technology firm Adapt IT said its long-serving CEO Sbu Shabalala will take a leave of absence for three months to “attend to personal matters”. This comes in the wake of media reports at the weekend that he allegedly hired thugs to beat up the partner of his estranged wife.
Adapt IT didn’t specify the “personal matters” that Shabalala had to tend to when the company made his temporary departure known on Monday 10 May in a JSE stock news announcement.
However, the
Sunday Times reported at the weekend that Shabalala allegedly hired armed thugs to threaten the partner of his estranged wife, Neo Shabalala. Neo’s partner, according to the newspaper, is suspended eThekwini city manager, Sipho Nzuza, who is in critical condition at a Durban hospital.
Adapt IT CEO Sbu Shabalala has been accused of allegedly sending a group of heavily armed men to the home of his estranged wife, Neo. Her partner, an eThekwini city manager, is currently in hospital in critical condition following an attack in which Neo claims “five men armed with automatic rifles, handguns, and batons entered her home”. Sipho Nzuza, Neo’s partner, has suffered serious injury to his spleen and has had to have part of his kidney removed. According to MyBroadband, Shabalala’s estranged wife was allegedly told that she had been “granted a reprieve” from physical assault, on the basis she sign an agreement in their ongoing legal dispute. The former couple are currently embroiled in a legal altercation over money. MyBroadband reports that “Neo is claiming part of Sbu’s assets which she says is over R133m.” BizNews approached Adapt IT and Sbu Shabalala’s representatives to obtain their side of the story. Shabalala was not available for comment.
Supplied
Adapt IT CEO Sbu Shabalala has taken a leave of absence following a newspaper report that he was allegedly involved in ordering a violent attack.
The company s share price tanked by more than 12% earlier on Monday following the Sunday Times report.
The accusations against Shabalala come at a critical juncture for Adapt IT, which received a takeover offer from the Canadian company Volaris last month.
JSE-listed software company Adapt IT founder CEO Sbu Shabalala has taken a three-month leave of absence amid a report that accuses him of alleged involvement in a violent attack.
The Sunday Times reported that Neo Shabalala filed for an urgent interdict against her husband, Sbu Shabalala. She accused him in an affidavit of ordering an attack on a man she is now living with, who reportedly ended up in hospital after intruders entered their home, according to the newspaper.
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