Cash from South 32

Hey, when do I get my money from the South32 unbundling from BHP Billiton? Good question. I called around locally and could not find anyone who knew the answer yesterday. I trawled the SENS messages and the website of BHP Billiton to find some clarity, there was none. Then I though to myself, that is dumb, why did I not think of calling the company in the first place. So I searched online and in SENS messages and found that the South African media contacts were not in South Africa, there was a fellow in London and a woman in Melbourne. I called the fellow in London, his colleague said that he was out, I sent an email and got an out of office. Oh dear. So in hope, I called Melbourne and chatted to a very friendly woman who said that she would get the investor relations people to call me. I thought in the interim that I should send an email to a fellow in London who was on their investor relations page.

And then I thought, ah well, perhaps he will call in a bit, or email me back. And he did, he was polite and gave me the feedback that I needed. He said that the folks who had the South32 shares and were selling them in the market as part of the program (of taking the cash portion) had given them a timeline of 8 weeks maximum for having concluded the sales, effective from last Monday. So, we are a week and a half into that! That is both good and bad news. Bad news in that I had indicated earlier that we would have seen the money by now, that was my best guess, for which I must apologise profusely and secondly it is good news as we will all get an average price that is marginally higher.

Polite man, nice man, delivering a message that I was not too excited to hear, that it is going to take us around 8 weeks to get the cash from South32, at longest, expect the cash in the account in around 5 weeks from today, towards the beginning of July.