Assignment Problem: Corporate Governance
On 10 August 2014 the Governor of the South African Reserve Bank (SARB) announced that the Registrar of Banks (Registrar) and the Minister of Finance had decided to place African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL) under curatorship. The report concerning the demise of ABIL illustrated the prejudice or potential prejudice suffered by stakeholders included placing the jobs of the 5 700 bank employees at risk as well as many individuals invested through corporate investments.
Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of ordinary South Africans invested their savings in ABIL shares through asset managers. The asset managers, some of whom were major shareholders in ABIL, informed the Commission that the losses incurred on ABIL shares were billions of Rand.
The following excerpt was extracted from the executive summary of the Commission report.
"In expressing that opinion, save as appears in the Report, the Commission does not make a finding that all the board members were responsible - equally or otherwise - for such conduct. The Commission did not have the time nor the capacity to investigate each board member's individual conduct in the period 2007 to 2014 in order to ascribe individual responsibility. But it must be borne in mind that in terms of s66 of the Companies Act, the business and affairs of the bank had to be managed by or under the direction of its board, which had the authority to exercise the powers and perform any of the functions of the bank."
Based on this excerpt, could the individual board members of ABIL at that time have been held accountable in their personal capacity? Motivate your answer by also referring to the accountability requirements for directors of companies as depicted in the Companies Act of 2008, as well as other relevant standards of conduct or duties to which directors can be held to account.