In recent months during various public presentations – to analysts, shareholders and MPs – Steinhoff has stressed that one of the most pressing issues it faces is the number of legal proceedings that have been initiated against it.

The other pressing issue is its crippling debt. Having cannily, but expensively, stabilised the debt situation, the Steinhoff board is now focused on dealing with angry litigants.

Some of the litigants lost hundreds of millions of rands when the share price imploded (https://www.sharenet.co.za/v3/quickshare.php?scode=SNH) after the December 2017 announcement of “accounting irregularities”...