Simba Group Chairman, Patrick Bitature.
Businessman Patrick Bitature has admitted that the last few days have been very tough for “me personally and for our group as a whole as we made news for all the wrong reasons.”
“No doubt as a businessman and one always looking for new pathways, I knew that one day these kinds of headlines would cast a cloud over decades of hard work. As you all know today, we live in a world of 24 hour news cycle full of opinions, suspicion and innuendos. For that I make no judgement and hold no grudge. Legal and commercial issues have arisen in our financing and these are being addressed and when the moment is right, I will speak to them. No doubt these are tough challenges I am responsible for and are challenges I will face and resolve. Social media is not the place to resolve these issues,” Bitature said in a statement Sunday.
He, however, reassured all “our staff on the frontline of service to our customers, all our suppliers and you our customers that we are open for business and ready to serve you as we have done for the last 25 years.”
The woes, arose from a 2014 transaction when Vantage Capital provided $10m or Shs36.6b, at the current exchange rate, to Simba Properties Investment Company, the property investment arm of Simba Group. At the time both the Skyz Hotel and Moyo Close Apartments were still under construction and were set to be completed in 2015.
In a press statement issued in December 2014, Bitature welcomed the deal, noting that “Vantage brings an important and exciting new model of financing to the East African region. Simba Group is pleased to have found a strong mezzanine financing partner who provides medium-term growth capital but does not want to take our hard earned equity”.
The investment in Simba Properties was Vantage’s first investment in Uganda.
Subsequently, the two parties fell out over the alleged failure by Bitature’s empire to pay back the monies owed to the investor. Through his lawyers, Bitature has since challenged efforts to have him pay back on grounds that Vantage, among other things, is not legally registered entity in Uganda.
