Business Brief | TransCap reports improvements amid huge losses; The United States quadruples tariffs on Chinese electric cars

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On a busier day for corporate news, Anglo American unveiled a plan for what it described as its most radical restructuring in decades, while Old Mutual Property Fund has a major new investment. Transaction Capital (TransCap) warned of a big loss but improvement, and Business Unity SA confirmed a legal battle against NHI. In international news, the White House unveiled new tariffs against Chinese products, and tariffs on electric cars are set to quadruple to 100%.

Transaction Capital, which spun off WeBuyCars in April, It said on Tuesday that it had achieved its goal of becoming an unencumbered investment holding company with two assets. It now owns 100% of debt recovery group Nutun and 75% of Mobalyz – which includes taxis in South Africa and is written down to zero, with net cash of about R120 million. But the group still expects to report a huge loss, improving by between 16% and 26% in the six months to the end of March from a loss of R1.7 billion previously. The demerger of Transaction Capital returned R5.2 billion to shareholders and the group raised R1 billion through a placement, allowing it to materially repay its debt sooner and move it to a net cash position at the holding company level. But Mobalyz made an underlying loss from continuing operations driven primarily by a reduction in escapes, breaches and credit default covers (AVCS) in its SA Taxi insurance business, resulting in a one-off net loss of R966 million. SA Taxi, together with its financiers, chose to materially reduce this cover, resulting in an acceleration of impairment charges, it added. He added that despite the negative impact of this decision on the profits of the period, it is necessary to create a sustainable insurance business, which has been achieved now. SA Taxi has not achieved a balance sheet restructuring but the losses of this business, although consolidated at group level, are not funded at holding company level. Transaction capital fell by 2% on Tuesday, and is currently valued at about R2.2 billion on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.