If anyone doubts that big business needs to take BEE seriously, read this story from Business Report here.

Below I've made some comments and reshuffled the extracts to ease "reading between the lines":

Anglo Platinum (Angloplat) could conclude black economic empowerment (BEE) deals worth as much as R2.5 billion this year to take its BEE credit to the mandatory minimum of 26 percent.

So we see the scale of the challenge, but why the mandatory target?
Angloplat has applied to convert all its mining licences to new order rights, but no conversions have been approved.

This story also reveals that understanding the rules and carefully considered strategy helps.
Angloplat spokesperson Trevor Raymond said the group calculated its credits using the hybrid method, which involved assessing the share of production owned by BEE partners at a mine and the proportion of platinum resources or reserves owned by partners at a project.

The rest of the platinum industry uses metal output as the benchmark for calculating BEE credits.

Raymond said Angloplat's approach was to empower at the project level because it allowed BEE groups to raise a reduced amount of funding relative to buying an equity stake. All the other platinum mining players have introduced or plan to introduce BEE partners both at their mines and at group level.

Some mines and projects would be empowered beyond 50 percent, he said, while BEE partners would own less than 26 percent at others.

What others have to say:
A Johannesburg analyst said if Angloplat sold 10 percent of its equity, it would have to do so at a major discount, but if it sold interests at the project level by selling ground, the dilution of its equity would be negligible.

The deputy director-general of regulation at the department of minerals and energy, Jacinto Rocha, said the department would only express an opinion on this approach when presented with the facts.