Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) CEO Tanya Cohen is stepping down after two-and-a-half years at the helm of the apex business organisation, severing a crucial link, temporarily at least, between SA’s web of business organisations and government just as President Cyril Rampahosa’s new administration starts kicking into gear. Its been a monstrously difficult few years for government-business relations, and that has taken its toll on BUSA CEO Tanya Cohen who is stepping down six months early,...

For four years now, the Competition Commission and more than 20 local and foreign banks have been at loggerheads over charges of currency manipulation. It has been an exhausting, expensive, convoluted effort. On Wednesday, the Competition Tribunal stepped in and effectively instructed the commission how to frame its case in a way that can only be construed as a setback for the commission. If you had to summarise in colloquial terms the Competition Tribunal’s finding on Wednesday, 12 June 2019...

If there is one question on the subject of the economy President Cyril Ramaphosa should answer during his State of the Nation Address it should be this: Why did pumping R1.5-trillion into the economy over the past decade have no effect? Cast your mind back briefly to the heady days of 2009. What salad days they were. At that point, things were flying, but danger loomed. The SA economy was just about to be caught up in what was to become the great global recession. But as it happens, the...

115k Reactions Naspers faces a pivotal moment; can it graduate from being a wild, somewhat haphazard, occasionally inspired tech investor to being a focused operator? For such a huge company, Naspers has a peculiar problem similar to someone who just arrived at a new school from out to town. Who are they? Are they important? Who are their friends going to be? Should we just ignore them? Could they make the first team? You could call it a self-recognition problem on steroids. Naspers is now...

Naspers is planning to list its international businesses on Euronext Amsterdam in the next few months, but the listing could have a perverse effect on local and foreign fund indexes. One of the claimed advantages is that the unbundling will decrease the way the tech company dominates the JSE’s indexes, but fund managers are concerned the effect could, in fact, be the opposite. Call it the curse of unintended consequences. When Naspers lists on the Amsterdam exchange in the next few months, SA...