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Blank is back in the sell with Iota
FINANCIAL SERVICES
FORMER stockbroker Greg Blank is back in action with the launch of a new specialist financial services group called Iota Financial Services. It will list on the JSE via the Sho-Craft cash shell and consists of financial services group Pride, stockbrokers SP Reid & MacKeurtan, property trading company McCreedy Friedlander Property Consultants and Blank's company Lex Trading. To fund the acquisition of these units - and future ones - Iota is set to raise R100-million via a rights issue in February. Blank will act as a full-time consultant. He is still on parole and, it is understood, because of his fraud conviction he cannot become a director of a listed company unless special approval is given by the Supreme Court. Iota chief executive designate Mike Gahagan says a private equity fund and further "like-minded businesses" will be added and moves are afoot to secure banking and insurance licences. Blank and his friend Hilton Kramer, a former joint managing director of Housewares, have spent the past five months putting the new group together. Gahagan says the aim has been to build up a strong team of entrepreneurial individuals who could offer a niched "one-stop" investment environment. Iota has bought the different units for about R42-million, to be settled through shares and cash. The Pride Group, which incorporates Northwest Financial Services and is involved in short-term insurance, group benefits, life insurance products, funeral benefits and investment planning services, was acquired for R22-million. The value placed on SP Reid, a third-generation family stockbroking firm established in 1938, is R7.2-million. Iota paid R6.8-million for McCreedy Friedlander Property Consultants, which offers property services and is represented internationally through its links to Savills, one of the UK's largest firms of chartered surveyors. Blank's Lex Trading, acquired for R6.2-million, is involved in general share trading activities. Iota has also entered into a strategic alliance with Ventures & Acquisitions, headed by Dave Hillewitz. Iota is expected to have earnings of 31.24c and a net asset value of 311.14c a share at the end of its new financial year. In a deal effective March 1 this year, a consortium of some Iota directors gained a 77% stake in Sho-Craft. It sold Sho-Craft's former operations to its directors Manfred Judin and Frank Haymann, and will offer to buy Sho-Craft minorities' shares at 55.7c each. Iota's executive directors include Gahagan, Kramer, Mark McCreedy, Jeremy Friedlander, SP Reid's Neil Burnett and Anne MacKeurtan, and Mike Oliver, formerly of Fleming Martin. Peter Reynolds, a senior partner at attorneys Webber Wentzel Bowens, will be appointed non-executive chairman.
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