Hassan Abdullahi Aalim

The co-owner of South Africa’s biggest shopping centre has gone into business rescue. I have been writing a lot recently about the revival of Fourways Mall (which has been pretty impressive since the new centre managers took over in February 2024) So let’s unpack what this actually means… Azrapart owns 50% of Fourways Mall while Accelerate Property Fund owns the remaining 50%. Flanagan & Gerard, along with Moolman Group, are the property managers of the mall. Michael Georgiou is the sole director of Azrapart. He was formerly the CEO and non-executive director of Accelerate Property Fund. Investec and RMB took Azrapart to court because the company owed them R2.3 billion. The Free State High Court placed Azrapart into business rescue because the company could not pay back this debt. Before the judgement, Azrapart said that it was close to finalising a deal with UK-based Redcore Hospitality to cover the R2.6 billion debt. No proof of the funds ever materialised. There was also a UK law firm that revealed that Redcore had zero employees and zero turnover in 2023. This exercise of back and forth with no money in the end, delayed the entire process for 9 months. The court then ruled in favour of business rescue under the Companies Act. Here comes the irony. Fourways Mall has experienced some significant changes over the past few months. Foot traffic is up, and vacancies have decreased. Renovations worth millions have repaired the roof, installed solar panels, new lighting, and other improved systems, such as efficient parking layouts. The overall vacancy rate of the mall is still high but continues to improve. They reduced vacancies from approximately 24% to 13%. They’ve leased over 20 000m2 of new space and completed over 50 000m2 in renewals. I chatted with John Holley, who is the Financial Director of Flanagan & Gerard. He says it’s a positive step in the continued revival of Fourways Mall. He went on to say: “There is no change in any way in the operations or the continued development and improvement of Fourways Mall. The mall is governed by an exco agreement between Azrapart, Accelerate and the funding banks. Although Azrapart is in business rescue, the banks being the majority creditor and APF, the other shareholder, continue to support the stabilisation of the mall and even put in more Capex as required, as the mall continues to go from strength to strength.”