Steinhoff collapse: a failure of corporate governance

Jannie Rossouw and James Styan

International Review of Applied Economics, 2019, vol. 33, issue 1, 163-170

Abstract: South Africans are still in shock after the near-total financial collapse of one of its best-known companies, Steinhoff (Steinhoff International Holdings N.V.). Although incorporated in The Netherlands, the company’s head office is in South Africa. Before its collapse, Steinhoff was among the top-10 companies on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Full details of the collapse of Steinhoff are still emerging, but the collapse commenced after the resignation of its Chief Executive, Mr Markus Jooste, when it became clear that the company’s external auditors were not prepared to sign off its 2017 financial statements.A number of lessons can be drawn from the collapse of Steinhoff. Steinhoff is a classic case of corporate governance failure, while the collapse also shows the danger of an all-powerful chief executive, and the limitations of a two-tier board structure. In addition, serious questions have to be asked about the external auditors who signed off on financial statements in earlier years.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/02692171.2019.1524043 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:irapec:v:33:y:2019:i:1:p:163-170

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CIRA20

DOI: 10.1080/02692171.2019.1524043

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Applied Economics is currently edited by Professor Malcolm Sawyer

More articles in International Review of Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().