Chairperson's Year-End Message

15 December 2020

Dear Members,

The Board and management would like to wish all of you a safe, healthy and happy end of year break. May you all get some much-deserved rest and the opportunity to spend quality time with your families and loved ones.

2020 has been a challenging and difficult year consisting of virtual meetings, social distancing, the wearing of masks, not being able to operate from an office environment and where we all had to deal with clients and the Regulators remotely; certainly not something for the faint-hearted. We had no choice but to "keep calm and carry on"!!

As Erma Bombeck once famously said, "Worry is like a rocking chair: it gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere!" I think that we all came to the conclusion that it made no sense to remain anxious and become paralysed by the COVID-19 Pandemic. We need to push on into 2021 and hope that the vaccine arrives as soon as possible.

We really did have a great SARIPA Virtual Conference with just over 200 participants joining us on the day. Issues relevant to business rescue and insolvency were covered in two excellent panel discussions and we also heard some refreshing and interesting perspectives from Stephen Koseff. Larry Soffer (our mentalist and magician) kept us on the edge of our seats reading our minds and even getting Stephen Koseff to shake his head in wonder. Here are some comments received from members and participants –

• “Thanks Eric and Haroon and the SARIPA Team for an excellent “social distancing” conference - difficult times but well done”. Peter Gordon
• “Whilst I cannot speak for others, the thought crossed my mind that Covid-19 had put paid to any form of conference this year. Allow to say that I was most impressed with the “new” way of communicating in our electronic age.  Please pass on my compliments to all who played a role in putting a most enjoyable conference together. What did I take away from it? My ability to entertain anyone showing an interest in switching an elastic band from one finger to another!!!!! May all future conferences, in whatever ever form, grow from strength to strength.” Selwyn Trakman
• “Very interesting indeed!” Richard North (RMB)
• “Thank you for an interesting and informative conference.” Bhanu Pema 
• “Thanks everyone - thank you SARIPA organizers,” Shaun Collyer 
• “Thank you for a fantastic conference, great panellists and the magic show was a lot of fun.” Michelle Ireland 
• “Thank you SARIPA. Thoroughly enjoyed the day with you. Particularly enjoyed Stephen Koseff.” Eddie Coetzer
• “Brilliant speakers, brilliant conference! Well done all.” Reinette Steynsburg
• “Awesome job guys, it was a great conference. Who would have ever thought you could keep us at our computers for the whole day.  Panellists were fantastic. Very very well done to all involved and especially to Eric, Haroon and Angela.” Marlene Retief
• “Well done to the SARIPA board and team on an interesting and informative virtual conference!” Jennifer Smit
• “Well done to everyone. All of the best.” Abe Temane
• “Many thanks SARIPA for organising. Especially enjoyed the panel discussion this morning.” Robyn Kitto

SARIPA will continue to monitor the status of the pandemic and whether there is any window of opportunity for us to continue with our regional and annual conferences in 2021. We are certainly going to continue with the rollout of webinars and training videos from early in the new year. So watch this space carefully and do not miss out on cutting edge issues being discussed and presented next year.

So here we stand on the edge of 2021. Unfortunately, pandemic case numbers continue to increase worldwide and at home. I have no doubt that as SARIPA members we will continue to have significant workloads of both rescue and insolvency mandates in the year ahead. It is up to all of us to dedicate ourselves to continuing to service clients’ needs as best as we can, and in an effort to maintain the highest possible standards to both the administration of insolvent estates and to restructuring and rescue appointments.

I would like to take the opportunity to thank my co-chair, Haroon Laher, all of the SARIPA board members, our COO René Bekker, as well as Angela Bailey and Wiida Hamman for supporting and running the organisation in 2020.

Again, I wish you all well and hope that we can all see each other again in the very near future.

Dr Eric Levenstein (Chairperson)