Category Archives: Corporate governance

KQ EGM 2017

Kenya Airways (KQ) held an EGM – extraordinary general meeting of its shareholders today in Nairobi. KQ Chairman, Michael Joseph opened the KQ EGM with a statement that this was essential to the future of the airline, as it restructured their debt and reduced their cash payments. He cited the origin of the airlines’ problem as the fleet expansion, ordering new planes back in 2005, that arrived later than expected, and soon after there were issues like terrorist attacks, economic decline, Ebola and the airport fire. This was at a time that there were a lot of state-owned Middle East airlines allowed to Nairobi who did not have a profit motive and who undercut their KQ’s prices.

KQ’s first Dreamliner arrives in April 2014

He said the board had made responses such as offloading some aircraft to leases till the situation improved and they had also hired Sebastian Mikosz as CEO, who is a turnaround specialist.

Excerpts from the KQ EGM and the hour-long Q&A with shareholders

The Michael Joseph factor: Shareholders seem to have a lot of faith in Michael Joseph as a person to lead the turnaround. This is because of his legacy at Safaricom; he himself admitted as much in the challenge ahead of him, but he said that turning around KQ was much more complicated than Safaricom.

Hot button issues:

What Went Wrong? When it’s not clear what happened, Kenyans typically assign blame to corruption or mismanagement and several shareholders ask about a forensic audit query that had been done at KQ. Joseph said they had not forgotten the forensic audit, and he was going to clean the airline; he said that action had been taken with staff several dismissed or in court (He said justice was slow in the country cited a case where the former CFO had sued the airline and that case had not been heard a year later).

Payment to advisors; This came up several times and the figure cited was Kshs 1 5 billion. Joseph said the payment was a lump sum figure for the many advisors engaged in the complex restructuring deals. He cited Mckinsey as one case he was not happy and which had been terminated. Others were international competitively sourced and they had negotiated them down but had to pay.

Management ownership and staff pay: Shareholders asked the board and management to show commitment, by becoming shareholders. Joseph said he was a big investor at Safaricom and the KQ restructuring had an employee share ownership plan (ESOP) as part of the ownership plan, while disclosures about directors shareholdings would be forthcoming. Another shareholder asked the board and management to take a pay cut in line with what was expected of other employees.

Role of Government: Joseph said that the Government had allowed many new foreign airline flights to Kenya and that whenever the president visited abroad, other presidents asked if their airlines can fly to Kenya, or the tourism minister allows them to fly tourists to Mombasa – forgetting about KQ. Part of their future engagement with government will be on licensing of other airlines. On a question about nationalizing the airline, Joseph said that this had been ruled out and that KQ would remain a public company.

Banks left out to dry: Some shareholders asked if the banks agreed to the conversion? Banks lend depositors money to get it back and not for shares – and do not take KQ’s problems to other banks where this will make us miss dividends. There is a court case brought by some banks that will be ruled on August 10.

Fleet and performance CEO Mikosz spoke about monitoring the perception created in media about delays and cancellation at KQ and which unfairly gave the airline a bad impression. He said that flying 160 flights per days you expect 2-5% are expected to have some delays and this was standard in the aviation industry, but their stats were good.

Minority shareholders: Several minority shareholders said they had voiced issues at past AGM’s about high ticket prices, low dividends, and other issues who had been ignored and who were told that the airline was alright. Michael Joseph said he was an independent director and he and others were there to look out for minority shareholders.

Shareholders at the KQ EGM unanimously voted for the lengthy balance sheet restructuring that was done in a single vote.

Another circular will be issued with terms for shareholders investing afresh in the airline.

The next meeting will be a regular shareholder’s AGM on September 21.

KQ EGM swag: transport to/from town, t-shirt, packed lunch by NAS.

Shareholders Chat with Mbuvi Ngunze

I had a tea chat with Mbuvi Ngunze former CEO of Kenya Airways (KQ), now advisor to the board on his time at the airline and views for the future. It was with a view from the perspective of retail investors and shareholders who will be affected by a restructuring process that is ongoing.

Excerpts

Assets: The airline now has a lean fleet with three aircraft groups: Embraer 190’s, Boeing 787’s and Boeing 737-800’ s (with some 700’s); while this is thin, this choice decision to stretch the fleet was much better than having idle aircraft sitting around – and they have been able to serve similar passenger numbers with the smaller fleet. He added that the global industry is in a slump with airlines like Emirates and Ethiopian parking aircraft but with KQ did not have that option, and it was perfectly okay to lease out aircraft and get them  back in a few years

Liabilities: They were servicing bank loans, but these unsecured lenders (the local banks) had to be refinanced. While some banks were upset about the deal to take equity in the airlines, and some are less comfortable in taking a hit, he emphasized that KQ had to treat all banks as an asset class equally in the transactions, and could not pick only some the banks.

Could this have been done earlier so the restructuring was not as drastic? He said it had to happen like this, in sequence, and that they had to right-size their operations before they turned to the banks and the balance sheet.

Revenue:   Routes have to make commercial sense to take them on. While there is an expectation to have direct flights to the US start soon, he’d rather get the ability to code-share, sell tickets, and earn revenue by selling tickets from Nairobi to any US city first. KQ can’t do that now, but Kenyan passengers do that with their partner KLM.

Also, there are many aspects to ticket pricing and KQ has to maximize on routes where they can to realize profits for shareholders.

Expenses:  Expensive Advisors? one complaint about the restructuring was the amount going to be paid to deal advisors  –  but he said that was traditional for arranging such deals and the costs were about 5% which as typical

Management: I conveyed a question from blogger/investor Coldtusker – on a perennial problem  at KQ of misaligned interests between board/management and shareholders, – his predecessor famously hinted that he’d rather buy livestock than airlines shares, and Mbuvi said that this was one of the things being addressed in the new equity deals that call for KQ employees to own up to 2% of the airline through an ESOP. He could not say if this is what led to pilots staging a go-slow last week, but he said that he was not involved on a day-to-day business since he had long ago handed over and oriented his successor – but added that performance-based compensation had to happen – however unpopular it was for pilots or shareholders.

Other Chats

  • Expectations: He said, it’s wrong to compare KQ and Ethiopian airlines, as they operate in a totally different airline market. Ethiopia is a closed aviation market, while Kenya is an open market – and Kenya’s open policy means that they control 40% of traffic into Nairobi, while Ethiopia has 80%. At Addis, Emirates flies’ 7 times there, compared to 21  to Nairobi and they also control cargo.
  • London Heathrow sale: a slot is not a building or a desk that was sold – it is the much-coveted right to a time to land and take off from Heathrow
  • The Senate was a circus – one that delayed and disrupted ongoing shareholder discussions, and where wild claims were made before television cameras – such as allegations of secret ownership of aircraft. He said KQ does not need to use intermediaries to talk to Boeing or Embraer.
  • He has no regrets; he came in as CEO at a time when things went wrong at the airline, but he does not feel he was handed a poisoned chalice.
  • Could things have been done differently? Yes, he would have taken Project Mawingu in slower steps.

For shareholders, he said it could have been worse and he says this restructuring is not due to the new companies act – the law was always there. Nationalization was considered, but it was discarded as it would not be good for KQ to operate as a government parastatal.

At the EGM this week, where shareholders will vote on an equity restructuring program, the same board will be there, and he will attend as a board advisor, not the CEO. The board will change after that and he says that going forward, he plans to be a shareholder of the airline.

WDR 2017: Governance and the rule of law

WDR2017, the World Development Report from the World Bank for 2017, looks at governance and the rule of law around the world and how they can impact countries and economic development.

Illustrative pic from the Star Newspaper to show what a large sum of cash will look like

some excerpts;

  • Elections alone are not enough to bring change – even when citizens manage to remove politicians whose performance is poor or diverges from their preferences, elections alone offer no credible guarantee that, once elected, new leaders will not shirk their electoral promises and credibly commit to citizens’ demands.
  • Local elites can capture public spending despite participatory programs; as they can disproportionately sway expenditure decisions
  • Inequality begets inequality In societies in which inequality is high as the effectiveness of governance to deliver on equity outcomes can be weakened structurally because those at the top of the income ladder not only have control over a disproportionate amount of wealth and resources, but also have a disproportionate ability to influence the policy process.
  • Devolve: By multiplying the number of more or less autonomous arenas within which public authority is exercised, decentralization increases the opportunities for policy innovations and the emergence of effective leaders. Often these innovations are spurred by political outsiders, who may not have access to the national policy arena but are more likely to acquire citizen support locally and spur local institutional reforms.
  • Female leaders are less prone to patronage politics and corruption.
  • Media content is often defined by elites leading to a bias, but new media can counteract this.
  • Political parties are on average the least-trusted political institution worldwide
  • Politically connected firms gain undue advantage in countries through using market regulations to favor firms, granting import licenses to favored firms, and diverting credit.
  • Land redistribution policies often fail due to transaction costs, incomplete contracts, and political agreements.
  • The Panama Papers highlighted legal and illegal ways in which assets found their way to 40 countries: Funds are legally earned through tax evasion and evading currency controls and shifting profits, but also illegally by exploiting natural resources, violating intellectual property rights, corruption, embezzlement, drug trafficking, and human smuggling etc.

See the 2016 WDR report.

Relief for Imperial Bank Depositors – Part III

This week, depositors at the closed Imperial Bank got some welcome news with the announcement that a third payment was going to be paid to them.

This comes after a first payment last December of up to Kshs 1 million per depositor that was paid through KCB and Diamond Trust banks and another one earlier this year of up to Kshs 1.5 million that was paid out by NIC bank.

This third payment is unique in that it targets the remains depositors many of who are believed to be large depositors.  After the first payment, the CBK had expressed concern that some  depositors had not bothered to claim the funds offered. But assuming that someone has funds of ~Kshs 50 million to Kshs 100 million at the bank, they were unlikely to be elated to received 1 million in the first or second rounds.

This time depositors can access up to 10% of the deposits, so the people above would get Kshs 5 or 10 million – still small, but much better- and depositors have a month to file claims at any NIC bank branches to receive the payments  (deadline 31 Jan 2017).

The news also comes after a few days after newspaper stories that revealed the names and evidence of correspondence of CBK officials  who may have benefited inappropriately from the largesse of the management of the bank that they were supposed to have supervises.

$1= Kshs 102

 

Why Imperial Bank May Not Reopen Part III

There are two or more sides to every story, and there are several at Imperial Bank. This is just one. The Central Bank (CBK) and the Kenya Deposit Insurance Corporation  (KDIC) have accused the shareholders/non-executive directors of the bank of being negligent in allowing the fraud at the bank estimated at Kshs 34 billion (~$34 million), and collecting dividends from what was a shell institution. The shareholders have fired back in replying affidavits saying they were not party to the fraud and that, among other things:

  • Documents they saw as directors (at board meetings). had been doctored by management of the bank (led by the late group managing director).
  • CBK officials helped doctor the records for many years during their inspection audits.
  • CBK officials received personal favours from Imperial Bank managers.
  • CBK staff and Imperial managers conspired to prevent one shareholder from becoming an executive director of the bank, which would have created a second centre of power (other than the GMD) and which might have uncovered the fraud.
  • The current CBK governor has made unreasonable demands on shareholders and failed to discipline his officers involved with Imperial – even appointing one of them as a receiver manager after Imperial closed.

Meanwhile, a judge issued a ruling that was interpreted differently and a group of depositors went back to court seeking a clarification of what the judge meant. It has been interpreted to mean:

  • Shareholders: The receiver managers (CBK/KDIC) must share information with, and consult, them on decisions affecting the bank.
  • Receiver Manager: Liquidation of the Bank can proceed liquidated.
  • Depositors: Judge said to pay us 40% of our deposits immediately.

Hearings continue next week.