COMPANY NEWS IN BRIEF

Sibanye-Stillwater lifts lockout

Sibanye-Stillwater has lifted a lockout at its gold operations in Johannesburg and the Free State after the signing of a three-year wage deal which has brought a protracted but peaceful strike to an end.

The operational start-up of the mines will now be conducted in phased manner over two to three months to ensure the safe resumption of production.

The mining group on Monday said the deal has been signed over the weekend, and as a result, the lockout has been lifted for members of trade unions the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) and the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM).

"We look forward to restarting our South African gold operations for the benefit of all stakeholders," said Sibanye CEO Neal Froneman. "We are pleased to have achieved an agreement which is in line with inflation and which will contribute significantly to the sustainability of our gold operations."

The wage deal results in an average 6.3% increase over a three-year period and is in line with management’s attempts to achieve an inflation-related increase, the company said.-Fin24

Google suspends engineer

Blake Lemoine, a software engineer on Google’s artificial intelligence development team, has gone public with claims of encountering "sentient" AI on the company’s servers after he was suspended for sharing confidential information about the project with third parties.

The Alphabet Inc. unit placed the researcher on paid leave early last week on claims he breached the firm’s confidentiality policy, he said in a Medium post titled “May be fired soon for doing AI ethics work.”

In the posting, he draws a connection to prior members of Google’s AI ethics group, such as Margaret Mitchell, who were eventually dismissed by the company in a similar fashion after raising concerns.

The Washington Post on Saturday ran an interview with Lemoine, wherein he said he concluded the Google AI he interacted with was a person, “in his capacity as a priest, not a scientist.”

The AI in question is dubbed LaMDA, or Language Model for Dialogue Applications, and is used to generate chat bots that interact with human users by adopting various personality tropes. -Fin24

Aveng finds a buyer for Trident Steel

Aveng has found a potential buyer for its subsidiary Trident Steel after technical issues about its classification weighed heavily on the JSE-listed construction group’s performance and share price.

It said on Monday that there was a "credible buyer" and that the due diligence process was "well advanced".

"To date, Aveng has disposed of non-core assets with combined proceeds of more than R1 billion. Trident Steel is the sole material asset still to be disposed of in terms of the strategy," it said in a market announcement.

"The proceeds from the transaction will be utilised to settle remaining external debt in South Africa, create further liquidity and strengthen the financial position of Aveng."

This is a crucial deal for the group, especially since it originally wanted to have the subsidiary declared "held for sale", in its results for the six months to 31 December. What happened was that it eventually had to declare Trident Steel as a "continuing business", which ultimately hit its results. -Fin24

Solal owner reconstitutes its board

Embattled wellness company Ascendis Health has reconstituted its board after the exit of non-executive director Gary Shayne.

On Monday, the group - whose brands include Nimue, Solal and VitaForce - said its new board will consist of Bharti Harie, Amaresh Chetty, co-founder and former CEO Karsten Wellner, Lawrence Mulaudzi, Harry Smit, Carl Neethling, and CJ Kujenga.

Ascendis announced Shayne’s immediate resignation as the group’s non-executive director last week. His departure comes as Ascendis continues with its battle to cut debt, shortly after it inked a new deal with its new lender Austell Pharmaceuticals.

Shayne, who was the CEO of private equity firm Coast2Coast Capital, which founded Ascendis in 2008, was reappointed in December 2021 after his first board resignation in 2019.

Since its listing in 2013, Ascendis’ share price has seen a significant drop of more than 93%. Coast2Coast, which had a stake in the wellness company, used its shares as loan collateral and was forced to sell large amounts of the shares between and 2019 to pay its lenders. -Fin24

Eskom probes fire at Duvha power station

A fire broke out at Unit 2 of the Duvha power station in Mpumalanga on Monday morning, Eskom has confirmed.

In a statement, spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha said the fire had been extinguished quickly and no injuries to staff had been reported. The extent of the damage was still being assessed.

No further details were given, except to say that the unit had been offline for a general overhaul since January this year.

Eskom has been battling theft, vandalism and sabotage as it struggles to keep the lights on. Late last month, theft and vandalism in Vanderbijlpark saw fire break out as two substations were targeted.

The cause of Monday's fire at Duvha is still unknown.

"Eskom is currently investigating the root cause of the fire, and the extent of the damage and the possible return to service," Mantshantsha said.-Fin24