Oh yes, I’m the Great Pretender
Ever felt like you got to where you are today because you’re lucky? Humility may be a beautiful character trait, but be careful that it isn’t impostor syndrome rearing its ugly head, especially if you are a high achiever. Queen’s hit song “The Great Pretender” reminds us of some of the challenges of impostor syndrome. As Freddie sang…“Too real is …
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IBM evolves once more
As you probably know, IBM is one of the original tech companies. The company can trace its roots back to 1911, admittedly to a time when it manufactured and sold machinery including commercial scales and cheese slicers. There’s a well-known saying in the corporate world: “Nobody gets fired for buying IBM.” It means that IBM was such a safe bet …
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ARC investors vote with their cash
I have been openly critical of the way the African Rainbow Capital Investments (ARC) story has played out. Without rehashing what I’ve previously written, I thought I should touch on the news that ARC’s capital raise has been less than ideal. To be clear: they’ve raised the full R750m they wanted. The problem is that shareholders didn’t give them as much …
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International firms circling South African companies
The Companies Act requires public companies to make an announcement whenever a shareholder crosses through a 5% milestone. In other words, if a shareholder held 4,8% and bought more shares today, thereby increasing to a shareholding in the company of 5,4%, the company would need to announce on SENS that this has happened. This is important because it alerts the …
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Here’s the deal: Trump vs. Biden
Every now and again, I come across someone truly extraordinary. One such person is Winford Collings, a soon-to-be Chartered Accountant with immense writing talent and a great love of American politics. The Finance Ghost isn’t a political platform and never will be, but the American election this year affects every single one of your investments, one way or another. The …
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Stats SA: Avoiding the word retrenchment
The headlines today were dominated by the long-awaited release by Stats SA of unemployment data for the second quarter. Lockdown only affected 10 days or so of Q1, but the true impact was felt from April to June. This Q2 data should’ve finally painted a picture of what really happened. Except, it didn’t. Much like the GDP data for Q2, …
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Not all tech companies are created equal
You know by now that the lockdown period was great for many tech companies. Although “tech” is used as an umbrella term all the time, it’s something of a misnomer to do so. The companies that did well typically offer consumer apps or enterprise cloud solutions. Some software companies also did well and there were of course outliers like video …
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The megatrends: investing in education
Imagine you held one of the first iPhones in your hands in 2007. With incredible insight into the future, you concluded that the smartphone would take over the world. Bravely backing your view, you decided to invest a sizable amount in this megatrend. If you had chosen Apple, you would be wealthy today. If you had chosen BlackBerry, you would …
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A game of billions
In the world of corporate and public finances, numbers can quickly lose meaning. You probably think carefully about spending R500, but I’ll bet you often read about a number like R5bn without a moment’s thought given to the size of this number. Let’s take a moment to explain how enormous this number actually is. the_ad id=”3223″ Written out in full, …
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Barloworld gets more starch in its diet
The deal was originally announced in March. Barloworld would buy the Starch division from Tongaat Hulett for R5.35 billion in a critical move for Tongaat which is on a recovery road. As ever, the deal remained subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. The norm for corporate transactions is to include something called a Material Adverse Change clause, or MAC clause. …
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