INDUSTRY FOCUS
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arabella country estate
services traditionally supplied by municipalities,
is done in a three-stage process designed to
but are unable to do so because there are
develop a 20-year plan, underpinned by a robust
no new rules of the game. The predictability
set of verifiable facts and driven by a coherent
of the past, when decision-making processes
strategy, that enables long-term budgeting and
were procedural and routine, has become
forecasting to be done. This process is currently
unpredictability, in which uncertainty prevails
being rolled out in conjunction with ARC to all
and anger mounts.
chapters across the country. It is also being
made available to other specialised interest
Then, on top of it all, comes a thing called the
groups that have to manage real estate in one
King IV Report on Corporate Governance, which
form or another, increasingly embedded in a
raises the issue of the fiduciary responsibilities
new regulatory and institutional landscape that
of directors, trustees and managing agents.
is changing so fast that it has not yet been
Central to these are ethics, responsibility and
formalised in policy and law.
risk. What this means is that anyone holding
fiduciary responsibility, even as an unpaid trustee
The good news about this process is that while
or director, has to make sense of this growing
it de-risks the HOA and those holding fiduciary
complexity under the persistent shadow of the
responsibilities defined by King IV, it also
threat of liability in terms of King IV for failing to
protects the investment value of the real estate.
act responsibly when acting on behalf of others.
Conducted systematically it also claws back
control over water quality, which is increasingly
Heavy stuff indeed! So where is the good
at risk from dysfunctional municipalities.
news? This comes in the form of a structured
intervention in which a team of professionals
Prof. Anthony Turton
helps the HOA and board to transition from
www.anthonyturton.com
an initial high-risk, low-information posture to
a future low-risk, high-information posture. This