Rational Perspective

LONDON — Roughly two-thirds of the world, including South Africa have grounded the Boeing 737 Max as airlines see a connection between the crash of an Ethiopian Airline jet that killed 157 people and a similar disaster involving the same plane last October in which 189 people were killed when a Lion Air flight crashed into the Java Sea in Indonesia. Yet, America’s Federal Aviation Authority decided not to take action and said it had no basis to order the grounding of the aircraft. This is despite pressure from several senior politicians in the US and two unions representing flight attendants calling for it. The New York Times says there is a very cosy relationship between Boeing and the FAA, and Boeing could even choose its own employees to sit on the authority and help to certify planes. President Donald Trump initially tweeted that he thought aeroplanes were becoming far too complex to fly, “Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT”, he tweeted after the Ethiopian crash. He has a

JOHANNESBURG — The most recent edition of The Economist has described how there is a new 'scramble' for Africa amid foreign involvement in the continent reaching new levels. A record number of new embassies, as well as renewed interest from emerging economic giants such as India, are resulting in new opportunities. Africa, of course, also faces several key challenges and risks. In this interview, Neville Mandimika, an economist and fixed income analyst at Rand Merchant Bank, talks about the key risks that the continent faces in the year to come. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today’s global business headlines… Aircraft maker Boeing’s troubles deepened yesterday as European regulators joined China, Ethiopia and Indonesia in grounding the company’s 737 MAX planes. German group Volkswagen, which sold almost 11m vehicles worldwide last year, is doubling down on electric cars. Henley Business School in the UK has cancelled this year’s full-time MBA after demand for the one year course collapsed. South African construction company Group Five was yesterday put into business rescue. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today’s global business headlines… British Prime Minister Theresa May faces another vote on her Brexit deal in the UK’s Parliament today which commentators expect to once again lose. Newmont Mining has managed to fend off a hostile takeover bid by agreeing to inject its prized Nevada gold mines into a Barrick-controlled joint venture. The US Department of Justice is hitting major obstacles in its efforts to bring former Credit Suisse executives to account for Mozambique’s crooked $2bn Tuna Bond deal. South African airline company Comair, which operates in the country through the British Airways and Kulula brands, has grounded all of its Boeing 737 MAX aircraft in the wake of Sunday’s Ethiopia Airlines crash. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Boeing 737 MAX operated by Africa’s leading Ethiopian Airline crashed killing all 157 on board, just six minutes after leaving Addis Ababa on yesterday’s scheduled flight to Nairobi. Germany’s two biggest money lenders, Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank, have agreed to hold merger discussions after both have suffered extended performance and share price declines. The respected Pew Research Centre’s investigation into 11 leading emerging markets concludes that over half the adults either own or have access to a smartphone – and over 90% of them use social media like Facebook and messaging Apps like WhatsApp. In other South African news, the trend to greater transparency accelerated over the weekend with the release of a critical report by the High-Level panel on the State Security Agency. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

South Africa is headed into election season and the stakes are high. After months of testimony at various commissions of inquiry, the full scope of Zuma’s maladministration has been laid bare. There can be no illusions that the ten years of Zumanomics were anything other than a disaster for the people of South Africa. But going into the election, the ANC under Cyril Ramaphosa is telling votes that, while the Zuma years were a disaster, the ANC is turning over a new leaf and committing to fixing what’s broken. The big question is – will voters believe this or not? And if they don’t, what will they do? Will they turn to one of the opposition parties (and if so, which one)? Or will they send the ultimate signal of weariness and disillusionment and just stay home on election day? In this episode, Alec Hogg and Felicity Duncan unpack the upcoming elections and what the recent GDP numbers may mean for the country and the ANC. They also spend some time looking at the latest in the Elon Musk saga as the entrepreneur

LONDON — We are waking up to the fact that barely anything we do online is private. I had a stark wake-up call when friends were talking about the European ski season on a WhatsApp group and ideas to borrow ski jackets were discussed; one brand name came up and hey presto, next moment we all saw ads for the brand on our Facebook pages. So, is Facebook actually using our private conversations to target ads on its other apps, could it be a coincidence? Facebook owns both Instagram and WhatsApp. And now Mark Zuckerberg talks about a privacy-focused new branded Facebook with ‘simple, intimate' places where no one else can see your data. Or does he mean, no one else but Facebook and its apps can and will use it as they see fit. And to make our new-found fear of privacy even worse is the warning from prof Amy Webb, she is a professor of strategic foresight at the NYU Stern School of Business. Prof Webb says only nine tech titans, three from China and the rest from the US are deciding the future of Artificial Intell

JOHANNESBURG — In a previous podcast with BizNews in 2018, Cape Town-based Adi Kaimowitz told us all about his interesting startup 'Virtual Actuary', which has been dubbed the 'Uber of Actuaries'. Almost a year later and Kaimowitz's model has been hailed globally amid him being invited recently to speak at a discussion on actuaries hosted by the Hartford InsurTech Hub in the US. Kaimowitz is now also planning a US expansion for Virtual Actuary amid interested demand from that side of the globe. We catch up with Kaimowitz to find out more. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today's global headlines: Shock Eskom hike of 9.4% in electricity prices approved by Nersa with more rises in the pipeline. Tesla is updating its charging networking claiming a charge in 15 minutes just as competition is starting to move into the electric vehicle market. Ramaphosa again declines to say how much his son received from Bosasa, but says he is very serious on corruption amid jeers of the opposition. The European Central Bank has become the first major developed country bank to provide new economic stimulus. Huawei uses US courts to fight back. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today’s global business headlines… In a year when President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on a range of imports to cut his country’s trade imbalance, the United States posted its largest deficit since 2008. Pressure on the US’s big tech giants rose a notch yesterday as the French government introduced a 3% tax on online advertising and digital marketplace revenues generated in the country. Zimbabwean finance minister Mthuli Ncube, who is on an investment roadshow in the US, yesterday said that the country has scrapped the 51% local ownership rule on platinum mines. In South African news, the day of reckoning drew a little closer yesterday for former Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste and his fellow directors. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In today’s global business headlines….. The price Tesla shares continued to fall last night, taking its fall in the three trading sessions of March well into double digits. Although hopes are high for a deal to end the trade war, tensions between America and China are sure to be tested after evidence surfaced of widespread hacking of US military secrets by Beijing. Former Nissan and Renault chairman Carlos Ghosn was yesterday granted bail of $9m, ending his 107 day jailing after his shock arrest last November. In South African news, the country’s official economic growth rate for 2018 closed at 0.8%, half that of its population expansion. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

LONDON — The South African Constitutional Court ruling in September 2018 on the decriminalisation of marijuana for personal use has increased pressure on the government to change its policy on the cannabis industry. In his Budget speech in February 2019, Finance Minister Tito Mboweni acknowledged that there is a need for a shift in policy so that it can become a potential source of revenue. But he is passing that joint… sorry he said ball to the leadership of the ANC to come up with a policy. It is hard not to use clichés with this one. And where legalisation falls, businesses move in to see whether they can make money from new opportunities. With the shift in mood in South Africa, a host of industries are poised to take advantage as can be seen at a series of Cannabis Expos all over the country. There is no doubt that many countries are moving towards some form of legalisation of marijuana. In the United Kingdom, one of the magic circle law firms, Allen & Overy now has a cannabis legal team. Canada, which le

In today’s global business headlines… The $225bn telecoms and media giant AT&T dominated global business headlines last night after announcing a major overhaul of its operations. China’s telecoms equipment supplier Huawei retaliated yesterday after months of being on the back foot over allegations that it is collaborating with the Chinese government to spy on western countries. Barrick, the global gold mining group headed by South African Mark Bristow, yesterday took the wraps off the rationale for its hostile takeover bid for rival Newmont, claiming a deal would deliver over $7bn in synergies. In South African news, public enterprises minister Pravin Gordhan has appointed Dr Tsakani Mthombeni of Goldfields Limited as the chairman of a Eskom new Technical Review Team. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

LONDON — We are all starting to slowly wake up to the fact that the minute detail of our daily lives that we share when we google, post our pictures on Instagram and Facebook are monitored, turned into big data and sold on to target specific advertisement to our tastes. We may think it is just a bit of fun, but it becomes quite a different matter when it can be used to up your premiums for medical insurance or when you find advertisements next to your profile that reveals information that you did not want to share. In a new book, THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School, Shoshana Zuboff claims that the digital era has been hijacked with specific commercial goals in mind and it is aimed at changing our behaviour. She speaks to Bloomberg’s Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney. - Linda van Tilburg See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For nine days at the end of January, on a live televised broadcast of South Africa's Commission of Inquiry into State Capture, Angelo Agrizzi unburdened himself of 19 years of nefarious deeds. His testimony had the nation riveted. Here was a self-admitted criminal kingpin providing the proof, naming the names of those who had been robbing the state in broad daylight. Each day he delivered yet more names from a little black book where the bribes, and those who received them, had been meticulously recorded. Agrizzi carried the title of chief operating officer of Bosasa, a company whose business model was the bribing of state officials to guarantee it was awarded massively inflated government contracts. Over the years Agrizzi estimated that he paid over R432m to Bosasa's crooked associates, with the volume of cash required to feed the corrupt network eventually reaching R6m a month. Getting his hands on so many notes forced Agrizzi to strike deals with cash generative operations like Jumbo Liquor wholesalers who

In today’s global business headlines… Chinese share prices, which have risen by a third this year to become the world’s best performers for 2019, have further upside according to a couple of investment heavyweights. January’s deadly slimes dam burst in Brazil, where 186 people are confirmed dead and another 122 are still missing, has claimed its first corporate casualties with yesterday’s resignation of the chief executive and two lieutenants at Brazilian mining giant Vale. Still with mining, the American state of Nevada came top of 83 mining jurisdictions in the 2018 Fraser Institute’s annual survey of mining’s most attractive destinations. Nevada, which rose from third in 2017, was followed by Western Australian (5th in 2017) and Canadian province Saskatchewan which fell one place last year. In South African related news, major retailing group Edcon secured a life-saving deal with creditors almost a year after it began negotiating the refinancing of a debt mountain created in 2007 by private equity investor

In today’s global business headlines… Negotiations on the US trade war with China is going so well that it has been described as “fantastic” by National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow. In the UK, Rolls Royce’s troubles with its Trent 1000 engines led to a £2.9bn pre-tax loss compared to profits of £3.89 billion a year ago. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was notified that his attorney general plans to put him on trial for bribery and fraud following a two-year investigation. The defeat of market-friendly opposition leader Atiku Abubakar in the Nigerian elections was met by the worst slump in stocks since June 2016. Former South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel said at the Zondo Commission of enquiry that Eskom is like an albatross around the neck of the fiscus. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

LONDON — It looks as if 2019 will be the year when a number of high profile tech companies are going public. Ride-haling company Lyft is first in line, followed by its bigger rival Uber. They are not the only companies who have signalled their intention to float; messaging start-up Slack, image company Pinterest and food delivery company Postmates are all moving closer to IPOs. There is good intentions in the flotations of Uber and Lyft for their drivers, as both companies have indicated that they are planning to offer cash bonuses to some of their longest-serving or most-active drivers which they can put into shares in the company. Estimations for the value of two ride-haling companies have been estimate at between $20bn and $30bn for Lyft while Uber comes in at around $120bn. In an interview with Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal, Rett Wallace of Triton.ai gave a list of factors that investors should consider before investing in newly-listed IPOs. He says big IPO listings have become less common. - Linda van Tilbu

In today’s global business headlines….. US president Donald Trump was described as a conman, a racist and a liar by his personal lawyer of 10 years, Michael Cohen in testimony before Congress yesterday. Six Africans feature on Bloomberg’s list of the world’s 500 richest people released yesterday. The share price of the UK’s Metrobank took another 26% hit yesterday after it merged that the one time London market darling requires a £350m capital injection from shareholders. In South African related news, the ugly truth emerged yesterday about how the Guptas and their allies at Eskom and in Jacob Zuma’s cabinet strong-armed international mining house Glencore to sell a major South African coal mine.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

JOHANNESBURG — It's not often that one hears the stories of emerging farmers in South Africa and the challenges they go through. Amid noise around land reform and the politics that go with it, it's these voices that get lost in the cacophony. So, it was an interesting opportunity to chat with Ncebe Jakavule, a chicken farmer in King William's Town, in the Eastern Cape. Jakavule recently benefited from financial training from Santam and is busy trying to acquire a farm in the region with the help of government. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.