Johann Rupert's Remgro has sold another tranche of FirstRand shares for R3.6 billion 195 million, according to BusinessTech , continuing a disposal process that has been running for nearly 6 years and raising the total amount Remgro has collected from the exit to well above R8 billion.
The sale is the latest move in a deliberate strategy to strip Remgro's portfolio of ordinary JSE-listed stakes that any investor can replicate in the open market, and redirect the proceeds toward positions only accessible through Remgro itself.
Remgro's relationship with FirstRand goes back more than 2 decades. In 2001, the company exchanged an 8.2 stake in Billiton and an 11.3 stake in Gold Fields for a 9.3 interest in FirstRand and a 23.1 interest in RMB. Those holdings eventually became the foundation for a banking exposure that, in June 2020, Remgro chose to begin unwinding. That month, it unbundled its indirect 28.2 stake in RMB Holdings by way of an interim dividend worth R23.9 billion, but retained a direct 3.92 stake in FirstRand that it described at the time as non-core.
