BizNews Radio
Welcome to BizNews Radio where we interview top thought leaders and business people from South Africa and across the globe.
From Pierneef to Sekoto: Top Strauss & Co expert gives us some art investing tips
JOHANNESBURG — Fine art auction house, Strauss & Co, is one of Johannesburg's cultural gems. Tucked away in an office in upmarket Houghton, I had the privilege to go and interview Wilhelm van Rensburg, who is a respected senior art specialist at Strauss & Co. The conversation in this podcast…
Want to send your child to an overseas university? Start saving R17 000 per month now
JOHANNESBURG — This interview will pique the interest of many a parent. There's no denying that it's time to worry about where South Africa's education system, and particularly its universities, are headed in the next few years. With a sluggish economy and policies such as free tertiary education for poorer…
Servest's R10bn journey: How RMB Corvest, Kenton Fine made magic
Earlier this year, private equity firm RMB Corvest ended a spectacularly successful (near 30% compound return), decade long partnership when Durbanite Kenton Fine's Servest was sold into a global competitor. The partnership began four years after Fine had taken his once JSE listed services private, and flourished through a succession…
How Allan Gray values stocks and why it likes Naspers, Glencore, Implats
JOHANNESBURG — Value investing is a refrain famously repeated by Warren Buffett. At its core, it simply involves buying securities that appear underpriced as per fundamental analysis. And in this interview, Allan Gray's chief investment officer, Andrew Lapping, explains how his firm has used value investing to identify Naspers, Glencore and Impala…
From the Editor's Desk: How Shaun Abrahams accidentally saved the rand
He's an unlikely hero is Shaun Abrahams, the now-disgraced former head of the National Prosecuting Authority. But Abrahams may inadvertently have done the country and the currency a world of good by getting sacked amidst the emerging markets currency crisis. The rand, which by all logic should have tanked in…
Jumping drones that take off, land using legs: Meet the SA engineer behind them
JOHANNESBURG — Inspired by birds of the order 'Passeriformes' (passerines), Matthew Whalley and his Johannesburg-based team have gone about developing innovative drone technology that can take off and land with the use of legs. Matthew's company, appropriately dubbed 'Passerine Aircraft Corporation' has even gone as far as attracting funding from…
Vodacom’s YeboYethu BEE scheme smashes it – six-bagger in ten years, with more to come
This special podcast is brought to you by RMB. In 2008 Vodacom SA attracted 85,000 new black shareholders in a public offer of shares via the widely publicised YeboYethu transaction. With 8,500 Vodacom staffers also opting into the scheme, this innovative, Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) transaction was one of the…
From tech startup star to champion GT race driver: Meet SA's David Perel
JOHANNESBURG — If you ever need any motivation to get you across the line with your personal goals in life, I suggest you listen to my interview with former Cape Town-based David Perel. What's fascinating about Perel, who now lives in London, is that he had a passion for racing…
From the Editor's Desk: As the rand plunges, is South Africa heading for a crisis?
The rand fell this week as South Africa got caught up in an emerging market sell-off driven by the collapse of the Turkish lira. It's a risk-off market, and currencies like the South African rand and Brazilian real have been caught in the gravity well. Even US equities have fallen…
MUST-LISTEN: Jack Ma inspires Johannesburg audience, speaks about journey with Alibaba
JOHANNESBURG — It's not every day you get to listen to the legendary Jack Ma speak and especially to a South African audience. Worth over $42bn, Ma is one of China's richest people thanks to his stellar tech company Alibaba. Starting with humble beginnings back in 1999, today Alibaba is…
Hard lessons from Venezuela: How an erosion of property rights accelerated the rot
JOHANNESBURG — Professor Sary Levy-Carciente had to travel a circuitous route from her home city Caracas, Venezuela to get to Johannesburg, South Africa this week. Because her country's national airline has so few direct routes these days, she had to first fly a series of connecting flights north to New…
Why SA's Green Mamba passport continues to lose its global bite
JOHANNESBURG — If you're one of the unlucky few (like myself) who don't have a second passport in South Africa, you've probably found yourself banging your head against visa requirements when travelling to places such as Europe. Apart from the costs, the sheer time wasted in obtaining visas for a…
Intelligent infrastructure: Why Futuregrowth invested in hi-tech SA firm Symion
JOHANNESBURG — Futuregrowth Asset Management has made a substantial investment, through its Development Equity Fund, into a very interesting local technology company called 'Symion'. Symion is a commercial and industrial technology group that focuses on 'intelligent infrastructure' and bringing smart connectivity to physical systems. Some of the sectors that Symion plays…
Ex-Strate CEO Monica Singer on her gig with ConsenSys and SARB's blockchain pilot
JOHANNESBURG — Uruguayan-born Chartered Accountant, Monica Singer, is legendary in South Africa's financial space as her 18 years at Strate included the hugely innovative introduction of electronic settlement of securities in the country. She also helped Strate become known as one of the most progressive Central Securities Depositories (CSDs) in…
Meet Joshua Miltz, co-founder of BitFund - SA's first diversified cryptocurrency platform for investors
JOHANNESBURG — Here's a very interesting interview with a very smart young South African guy who's still just in his twenties. Joshua Miltz, a computer programmer by training, is one of the co-founders of a South African FinTech business dubbed 'BitFund'. Now, BitFund describes itself as a single-entry point for…
Zambia's Sentinel copper mine, Africa's biggest, a project worth 20% of nation's GDP
The African Continent possesses enormous mineral wealth but bringing this rich endowment to account can be a complex matter. For decades Johannesburg-based RMB had specialised in the region. It has now played a major role in supporting the development of Sentinel, a $2.1bn operation, which when completed in 2 years’…
Foreign investment, SA expertise and support, delivers Mozambique's $10bn game changer
Mozambique's huge new export earner, the Moatize Coal Mine, reflects what's possible when private sector incentives and public sector support and banking facilitation comes together. A project that involves Brazilian mining group Vale, Japanese industrial giant Mitsui and SA banks led by RMB, the project includes a railway line of…
Meet IndieFin's Peter Castleden - Sanlam-backed actuary whose team is disrupting life assurance
Ever since Steve Jobs put his Apple Mac pirates into a separate part of the building, complete with a Jolly Roger and a different dress code, corporates have seen the value in hiving off their new product teams. In SA, the best example of this approach is life assurance group…
Portugal’s Golden Visa: Key updates you need to know if you’re taking the leap
JOHANNESBURG — For years, Portugal's Golden Visa programme has become a strong plan B for many South Africans looking to hedge their bets against the uncertainty that exists in the country. There have been some recent changes to the programme that have actually improved the efficiencies of the Golden Visa…
A2X CEO Kevin Brady: We're targeting 20% of total activity in SA equities market
JOHANNESBURG — JSE-rival A2X has started to build some serious momentum after launching in October 2017. Last week, A2X announced that Growthpoint would launch a secondary listing on the exchange. This comes after Sanlam also launched a secondary listing on A2X in April this year, becoming the biggest listing on…