Failure by a regulator in Zimbabwe to approve timeously the sale of JSE-listed Adapt IT to Canada’s Volaris Group is now holding up the planned transaction and related delisting of the Johannesburg-headquartered software services group.

Adapt IT told shareholders on Monday that a condition of the scheme is regulatory approval by Zimbabwe’s competition authorities. This, it said, has “not yet been fulfilled”. As a result, the scheme cannot be implemented according to the previously communicated schedule and the schedule will have to be revised.

Adapt IT had been expected that trading in its shares would have been suspended on Wednesday, 1 December, and for the delisting announcement to follow on 6 December. The termination of the listing would then have happened at the commencement of trade on the JSE on 8 December. Those dates will now not be met, with Adapt IT telling shareholders it will provide an updated timetable in due course.

Volaris Group offered Adapt IT shareholders R7/share in cash to buy them out. This is after another suitor, Huge Group – a specialist telecommunications provider also listed on the JSE – saw its all-share bid fail to win over Adapt IT shareholders.