Joffe proves there’s Long4Life after Bidvest

Within the South African business community, there are giants who seem to get it right time and time again. In contrast, there are others whose fall from grace has been quite spectacular, like Markus Jooste over alleged accounting fraud in Steinhoff and Christo Wiese over a number of poor investments. Let’s focus on one of the giants with a much …

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Barloworld gets its MAC on

Corporate mergers and acquisitions are fascinating beasts. In case you’re wondering, MAC doesn’t stand for mergers and acquisitions, but more on that later. The headlines always describe the deal as though nothing can go wrong. “Tongaat Hulett sells Starch division to Barloworld for R5.35 billion,” screamed the business media back in March. The better media houses (like Creamer Media) typically …

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Dial Business 911 – unpacking business rescue

Business rescue is a term that has become synonymous with the economic lockdown of 2020. Barely a day goes by without another headline proclaiming a well-known company to have entered business rescue. The most high-profile examples of companies in business rescue include Edcon, SAA and more recently Comair. The first two were broken long before COVID-19 arrived. People make the …

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Cry, the beloved Cape Town economy

I have lived in the two most economically important cities in South Africa: Johannesburg and Cape Town. The coffee is different. The weekend activities are different. The night life is incredibly different. Like all cities, they both offer positives and negatives. Nowhere is perfect. Most of all though, the economies are completely different. One is a banking, corporate and industrial powerhouse, …

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Imperial is almost a pure-play African business

There was an interesting announcement out of Imperial Logistics (JSE:IPL) today, especially considering JSE companies were scrambling for “hard currency exposure” just a few years ago.   ???????????????????????????????? ???????????????????? ???????????????????????? ???????? ???????????????????????????????? ???????????????????????? ???????? ???????????? “???????????????????????????? ???????? ????????????????????????” Conglomerates have been out of fashion for a while. Investors prefer pure-play businesses that allow them to take specific exposure to an …

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Amazon: Revenue for show, profit for dough

There’s a saying in golf: “Drive for show, putt for dough.” It’s a great phrase, as anyone who has ever hacked around a golf course will attest to. A perfect drive down the middle of the fairway might make you feel good as you stroll away from the tee box, but four putts on the green will quickly ruin your …

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Land Bank: the SOE crisis outta nowhere

Another day, another SOE crisis, right? This one is a little different. Before delving into the reasons for the current crisis at the Land Bank, let’s take a brief look at its background. the_ad id=”3223″ Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) DFIs are set up to support private sector initiatives in key sectors. Certain sectors are of such importance to a country …

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Netflix and Chill-vest

Subscriber growth in the first quarter of 2020: 15.77 million. That’s a big number. $14.17 billion is also a big number. That’s how much debt Netflix had at the end of March. They’ve just announced a debt raise of another $1 billion in junk bonds, so it’s only getting larger. Netflix is an investment anomaly, to be honest: The valuation …

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South African stimulus and the risk of stagflation

The word “stimulus” has been on everyone’s lips. Simply put, economic stimulus is an attempt by a government to kick-start growth during a recession. There are various ways and means to do this, using monetary or fiscal policy or a combination of the two: Examples of monetary policy: Lowering interest rates Quantitative easing (central banks buying longer-term securities in the …

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Finance FAQs edition 1: JSE | Working Capital | Emerging Markets

People use financial terms all the time, but rarely have a proper understanding of them. Simple terms aren’t always so simple. There’s no such thing as a stupid question, but people are still nervous to ask. From time to time, I’ll deal with a set of unrelated topics or questions in the finance world. Feel free to submit ideas for …

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