BL Premium comments that Old Mutual has no choice but to see the battle with former CEO Peter Moyo play out to the very last.  

There might be a temptation to settle things quietly, behind closed doors, and hope the whole thing blows over and is forgotten by year-end.  Certainly some shareholders, weary of the insurance giant making headlines for all the wrong reasons, would like to see that happen.  However this option is complicated by the fact that any payment to Moyo would have to be made public due to disclosure requirements.  Rightly or wrongly, the about 20% slump in the share price, since the dramatic announcement in May that Moyo had been suspended, has been attributed entirely to the ungainly public spat.  Old Mutual doesn’t seem to have played a very strategic game.  Equally, there have been blunders on Moyo’s side.  Whether the Old Mutual share price weakness is permanent will depend entirely on how this story ends rather than how it’s played.  The group’s history the last two decades has been about inappropriate generosity being heaped on poorly performing senior executives, while shareholders and policyholders have been left with slim, if any, pickings.  The Moyo saga should not represent a continuation of this unacceptable tradition.

• Read the full original of the above commentary at BusinessLive (paywall access only)
• Read too, Forget finances, Old Mutual is set to pay dearly in the reputation stakes, at BusinessLive
• And also, Peter Moyo haunts Old Mutual, at Financial Mail (paywall access only)

Get other news reports at the SA Labour News home page