Takealot: the Competition Commission wants to open the box

The Competition Commission recently announced that it will investigate Takealot’s dominance over the e-commerce market, likening the company to Amazon and Alibaba. Commissioner Tembinkosi Bonakele said the Commission would take a proactive approach to determine any behaviour by ecommerce platforms “which may be excluding rivals and entrenching dominance” before it happens. This implies that the Commission hasn’t identified any market …

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Dis-Chem’s regulatory headaches may hurt its M&A strategy

Dis-Chem had a rough few months in the court of public opinion. The company wanted special concessions from landlords, even though it was one of the few retailers allowed to remain open. That paled in comparison to the reputational damage from the allegations of hiking the prices of masks. Thankfully for Dis-Chem, Clicks had a real “hold my beer” moment …

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Naspers blocked from buying WeBuyCars

Naspers is a giant – the company is worth over R1.1tn (yes, trillion)! To give you an idea of how enormous that number is, that’s only slightly less than the total taxes collected by SARS in the 2019 financial year. Amongst a zillion other things, Naspers owns AutoTrader and OLX. Back in September 2018, they announced an intention to acquire …

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