ALLAN GREYLING

Allan Greyling has been a South African Chartered Accountant (CA(SA) for over 40 years. He is the CEO of IRM and is the founder of A@L to whom he still provides consulting and forensic litigation support services. Allan Greyling (“Greyling”) has been a registered chartered accountant in South Africa since 1977. He has been conducting forensic accounting investigations, due diligence and forensic business reviews, quantifying damages, conducting valuations of businesses and providing expert witness testimony as a regular feature of his business since 1992. Johannesburg: +27 (11) 217 3300 | Cape Town +27 (21) 424 2697 Cell: +27 (83) 264 9996 | Email: ag@irms.co.za

A summary of qualifications and experience

1. Greyling is a chartered accountant registered with the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants and is a director of Interactive Risk Management (Pty) Ltd, which formerly was registered as Accountants @ Law (Proprietary) Limited, a company specialising in forensic accounting.
2. To ensure business continuity and to comply with BBBEE, with effect 1 January 2017, the business of Accountants @ Law (Pty) Ltd (which name was changed in December 2016 to Interactive Risk Management (Pty) Ltd) (IRM)) has been sold to a new entity with the same name Accountants @ Law (Pty) Ltd (A@L) company number 2017/036025/07, which is wholly owned by Zungu Investments Company (Pty) Ltd (Zico), a level 1 BBBEE contributor (www.zico.co.za).
3. Greyling continues to provide his expert services via IRM to A@L.
4. He holds the qualifications Bachelor of Commerce (Durban), Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) (Cape Town). He was admitted as a chartered accountant in 1977.
5. During the period 1975 to 1980 he was employed by accountants Ernst & Young in Durban (then Ernst & Whinney) first as a trainee accountant and then as a chartered accountant.
6. From 1980 to 1981 he lectured at the University of Cape Town in accounting, auditing and management accounting. He lectured undergraduate and post-graduate students studying for their chartered accountants’ examination.
7. From 1982 until 1987 he was employed by a trade finance house, Repfin Factors Limited. He left after occupying the position of executive director.
8. From 1987 to 1988 he was employed by Volkskas Merchant Bank in the field of corporate and project finance.
9. From 1988 until 1990 he was employed by Old Mutual in its investment division. He held the position of portfolio manager and investment analyst with special responsibility for the banking, short term insurance and small market capitalisation emerging company sectors.
10. From December 1990 until April 1991 he was employed by Cape Investment Bank Limited as its managing director, at the behest of its new shareholder, Prima Bank, with the consent of the South African Reserve Bank, to assist it to trade out of its difficulties. Due to the extent of its insolvency it was liquidated and from April 1991 to August 1991 he assisted the liquidator of Cape Investment Bank and the forensic department of KPMG in its investigation into the bank’s collapse.
11. From September 1991 until December 1992 he was the managing director of Investec Asset Management Limited.
12. From February 1993 to August 2000 he was a co founder and subsequently a partner of the KPMG forensic accounting practice. During this time the practice grew to over 140 employees and is considered the pre-eminent forensic accounting practice in South Africa.
13. In September 2000 he commenced his own business, Accountants @ Law (Proprietary) Limited (A@L), a specialist forensic accounting firm of which he is the managing director and shareholder. It specialises in forensic accounting investigations, due diligence and corporate governance reviews and litigation support services, business valuations, corporate turnarounds and expert witness testimony.
14. In the course of his career spanning over 40 years, he has gained experience in the fields of auditing, valuing and investigating businesses, insolvency related investigations, corporate turnarounds, forensic investigative accounting and litigation support services and has been involved in numerous investigations involving multi-million Rand irregularities both in South Africa and abroad.
15. His services have been engaged by central banks in 5 Southern African countries, whilst he was at KPMG, to investigate the solvency and circumstances surrounding the failure of large banking collapses in these jurisdictions including the failure of the Meridian banking group which operated in 20 different countries throughout Africa as well as in the Bahamas, the United Kingdom and France.
16. He has assisted numerous large corporates in conducting due diligences either prior to or post acquisition in the spheres financial services such as investment banking, commercial banking, corporate trade and project finance, asset management, credit and financial management and general merchant banking and insurance. He has also conducted many due diligence investigations into businesses in diverse industries on behalf of his clients and assisted in developing and implementing corporate rescues.
17. Whilst at A@L he was mandated by the curator of Saambou to conduct investigations, due diligences and valuations of two financial service businesses in the insurance broking and debt collecting fields, with over 1000 employees, operating from over 100 branches throughout South Africa, which utilised complex information technology and which included planning the disposal, managing the turnaround and ensuring a successful investment exit for Saambou.
18. Since being involved in forensic accounting, investigations and litigation support, Greyling has gained wide experience in providing these services in various international jurisdictions. He has assisted in local as well as cross border investigations, being directly responsible for asset tracing and recoveries of tens of millions of rands, with the assistance of foreign court relief.
19. He has been engaged as the forensic accountant on behalf of the liquidators acting for creditors in a number of large-scale corporate collapses involving listed companies and other businesses. These include :
    – Tollgate Holdings, which included 150 subsidiaries, and collapsed during 1992 after being listed on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange as well as London and Ireland. He assisted the liquidators and their legal team in extensive recoveries from the corporate controllers.
    – Meridien Banking Group, which had operations in 20 African jurisdictions, controlled through a Bahamas and Luxembourg holding company structure, collapsed leaving claimants with hundreds of millions of U$ dollars of losses. Greyling, then a partner at KPMG lead the investigation into the collapse on behalf of the various central banks and creditors.
    – Macmed, which collapsed in 1999 leaving debts of ±R1 billion. He testified as the expert witness against the directors in a section 424 claim for reckless and fraudulent trading and also acted as the expert accounting witness in a claim brought against the auditors, which was settled out of Court.
    – LeisureNet which collapsed in 2000 with creditors in excess of R1 billion. Greyling was engaged to provide litigation support as the forensic accounting expert to assist the liquidators in their actions against the directors under a section 424 claim for reckless and fraudulent trading, which was settled out of Court. He also testified for 8 weeks as an expert in the matter against the external auditors, which trial was never completed.
    – Namibian Minerals Corporation which was listed on the Namibian and Toronto Stock Exchanges and which resulted in creditors incurring losses of more than half a billion rand
    – Various failed banks throughout Southern Africa
    – Tannenbaum pyramid/Ponzi scheme
    – Recycling and Economic Development Initiative of South Africa (REDISA)
20. He has been involved in conducting business valuations for due diligence purposes, in shareholder disputes, quantification of damages, insurance claim determinations and matrimonial dispute asset and income determinations as well as assisting in corporate turnarounds.
21. He has been involved in managing and advising on corporate turnarounds since 1982 as part of his financial management experience. These include:
    – Assisting in managing two delinquent clients of a finance house to mitigate losses incurred due to major frauds between 1984 and 1987
    – Turning a factoring company from an insolvent entity into a profitable business in two years between 1986 and 1987
    – Conducting solvency reviews for the South African Reserve Bank and other central banks in Southern Africa so as to decide whether to provide financial assistance for these failed banks between 1993 and 2000
    – Managing a delinquent bank on behalf of the new shareholders and working closely with the South African Reserve Bank to mitigate losses in 1990/1991.
    – Managing and disposing of various subsidiaries in the financial advisory and financial services field on behalf of the curator of Saambou Bank
    – Managing an agricultural futures exposure on behalf of a bank to achieve reduced losses after close out of its facilities
22. Managing the exposure on behalf of a bank of a delinquent profitable client by acting as a monitor of the manufacturing business in the contract packaging business so as to instill corporate governance structures and implement controls and facilitate a new management team
23. Conducting numerous due diligence and business reviews including profitable and distressed/failed businesses on behalf of investors and financiers/bankers
24. Conducting business recue proceedings in terms of the Companies Act No 71 of 2008 (see below)
25. Greyling has been engaged as a forensic accounting expert in numerous High Court proceedings, arbitrations, commissions of enquiry, labour Court hearings
26. He has been appointed as a receiver / liquidator by the High Court in the dissolution of a partnership of legal practitioners and as a referee with the powers in terms of section 19 bis of the Supreme Court Act no 59 of 1959 in various complex divorce cases and in terms of various High Court settlements between the parties to determine a particular issue.
27. He has also been engaged to undertake probity checks on behalf of the Western Cape Gaming Board to assess the financial viability of various casino applicants and to develop financial viability models to objectively rank these applicants.
28. He has also been appointed a business rescue practitioner by the High Court in South Africa, Western Cape Division, which appointment was also approved by the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission to be the business rescue practitioner in a distressed company. He was successfully able to rehabilitate the company through obtaining an offer from an investor, after restructuring the business and saving the employment of numerous employees.
29. Greyling through A@L has been instrumental in arranging international IT related software licenses for which A@L had the sole South African rights, to provide risk management and control in corporate environments and for forensic investigation purposes.
30. He has assisted the State Attorney and the Land Claims Commissioner by investigating the circumstances surrounding a major land claim application and valuing the affected parties losses arising from being dispossessed of their business as part of the land claim.
31. He has been appointed by the Master of the High Court in Port Elizabeth to conduct an investigation in terms of section 381 of the Companies Act no 61 of 1973 into the conduct of the liquidators.
32. He has been appointed by the High Court of Botswana to act as the “custodian” (akin to a statutory manager/curator) of a fund management business at the behest of the Non Bank Financial Institutions Regulatory Authority (NBFIRA).