The board of the troubled Blue Financial Services (Blue) on Wednesday asked the JSE to briefly suspend its listing on the bourse with immediate effect.

The pan-African micro-financier with operations in more than 10 African countries attributed this request to on-going talks with potential funders who could inject money into the company.

Blue has operations in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Malawi, Zambia, Swaziland, Namibia, Botswana, Nigeria to name a few.

“The negotiations pursuant to the proposed corporate action…remain key in achieving the group’s objective of securing a stronger balance sheet in order to raise future funding, considering the importance of this to the sustainability of the Group. These negotiations have yet to be finalised,” the board said in a statement.

A Johannesburg-based analyst said if Blue posted poor interim results, discussions for additional funding could be threatened.

“Probably, Blue thinks the potential funders could be discouraged when they see the company’s poor results,” the analyst told Ventures Africa.

Last week, the JSE Limited released a terse statement warning the struggling financial services firm it will de-listed it if it failed to release its interim results by the end of this week.

The former CEO and founder of Blue, Dave Van Niekerk, resigned from the struggling company in 2010 after the private equity firm, Mayibuye Group, took a controlling stake in the entity.

He stepped down after the company took losses amounting to billions of rands. Van Niekerk handed over the controls to Mayibuye CEO, Johan Meiring.

In December 2010, under the guidance of Mayibuye Group, Blue started an intensive three-year turnaround strategy.

On Wednesday, the board of Blue said this reversal of fortunes had already delivered much-needed advances to all operations of the firm with an additional capitalization to the tune of R840 million ($83 million).