It’s not every day the JSE hands out a censure; in fact, it’s almost never. Well, to be precise our bourse has dished out just 36 censures since January 2022. That’s 36 in almost five years. Not much when you consider the huge number of regulations the JSE monitors.
Over the five-year period the number of listings fell to about 250 from 300. In general, delistings have minimal impact on the number of censures. But there is one specific exception. The delisting of Iqbal Survé’s Sekunjalo-related companies — AEEI and Ayo in mid-2024 and late-2025 respectively — can be expected to significantly reduce the workload of the JSE’s issuer regulation department.
The two companies accounted for seven of the censures dished out since January 2022. That figure creeps up to eight if you include the PSG Capital censure of January 2022, relating to incorrect advice PSG Capital gave AYO. This means AEEI/Ayo accounted for 22% of the censures issued by the JSE over the past five years.
It turns out most of the transgressors are smaller listed entities such as Ayo, AEEI, Mantengu, Delta Property Fund and Trustco. The fact that larger companies rarely appear on the list could be due to any of a number of reasons: they have the resources to ensure adherence to the rules; they are less inclined to contravene because of the associated reputational costs which would result in bumping up their cost of capital; they are better able to contravene without detection; and they can push back more forcefully against the JSE’s censure efforts.
In a few cases it’s individuals. The most notable was the censure and R13.5m fine imposed on former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste in October 2020.
And, of course, there was a censure related to the other major controversial corporate collapse, Tongaat Hulett. In July 2024 the JSE informed investors that the public censure and fine imposed on the sugar group’s CFO, Murray Munro, remains binding and fully enforceable. In addition to a public censure, Munro had been fined R6m and was immediately disqualified from holding the office of a director or officer of a listed company for 10 years for “failing to fulfil his duties and responsibilities as the chief financial officer with the necessary due care and skill”.
All in all, not the sort of list any self-respecting company or individual wants to be found on. So it was surprising to see global gold producer AngloGold Ashanti being slapped with a censure recently.
The gold company transferred its primary listing from Joburg to the New York Stock Exchange in September 2023 and now has a secondary listing on the JSE, where it has traded reasonably actively.
So why the censure? Well, in August 2025 it published its second-quarter results and six-month earnings figure as well as a dividend declaration in the US a full 27 minutes before they appeared on the JSE’s news service, Sens.
For busy people 27 minutes might not seem like a long time, but for traders it could represent several lifetimes. Within 27 minutes you could buy and sell a share many times over. That’s why stock exchange regulators are very twitchy about ensuring the simultaneous release of information across markets. Paragraph 18.21(b) of the Listings Requirements (in force at the time) requires an issuer with a secondary listing on the JSE to ensure any information released on another exchange is published on Sens at the same time. Not to do so puts traders on the JSE at a huge disadvantage.
As the JSE states: “Any delay in releasing information or releasing it on one exchange before another, could result in a risk that some investors receive the information before others. This can lead to trading taking place on the basis of information that is not yet available to the wider market. Such situations undermine confidence in the market and its fairness.”
The price-sensitive information released by AngloGold Ashanti first appeared on August 1 at 12.07pm South African time via Businesswire, which the JSE describes as “a third-party news distribution service used to disseminate company announcements to the NYSE market”. A few minutes later it appeared on the company’s own website as well as on Bloomberg.
At 12.22pm it was disseminated through EDGAR, at the US Securities & Exchange Commission. Eventually, at 12.34pm, it appeared on Sens.
According to the JSE, AngloGold Ashanti argued it could not achieve the simultaneous or near-simultaneous disclosure. However, the JSE’s investigation determined it was reasonably achievable.
Andrea Maxey, VP investor relations at the company, said the delay “resulted from a combination of manual release protocols, an unexpected website software glitch, and standard processing times on the JSE platform”. You can see why the JSE wasn’t persuaded.
AngloGold Ashanti was slapped with a censure but wasn’t fined, probably because it co-operated fully with the JSE in its investigation. Maxey tells the FM it has also “allocated additional personnel to manage announcement publication procedures and (has) upgraded its website infrastructure to enable automated embargoed releases”.
What’s probably most important for shareholders is that, as Maxey says, “prior to this single incident, the company held an unblemished regulatory record on the JSE”. So it’s unlikely ever to reappear in this rogues’ gallery.