Rational Perspective

South Africa’s leading businessman, Johann Rupert, has taken the empire inherited from his father to another level. In 1988, just three years after joining his father Anton’s industrial group Rembrandt, Rupert junior created Richemont, today one of the world’s top luxury goods businesses. When Richemont restructured a decade ago, its 80m shares in British American Tobacco, some other investments and 350m euros in cash was injected in the newly established Reinet Investments, named after the Rupert’s original Karoo hometown, Graaff-Reinet. As we hear from Rupert, this company was created as a hedge against a market crash – but because of the lengthy bull market, its share price trades at a discount of 40% to the value of its assets. Rupert reckons that makes the thousands of small shareholders vulnerable to giving up their investments at a discount, so at today’s annual general meeting in Luxembourg, it was announced Reinet will buy back up to 20% of its own shares in the open market, narrowing that discount

JOHANNESBURG — Entrepreneur Khaya 'Angel' Matchegue, who is the owner and founder of fashion and design company Lechero, has found a brilliant niche in designing school uniforms, work apparel and other clothing. She started the business with just an idea but is now building it out, employing others and buying assets to scale up. It's a truly inspirational story. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

JOHANNESBURG — Everybody knows that the state of South Africa's education system is pretty appalling. But one programmed dubbed Partners for Possibility (PfP) wants to help ensure quality education for all school children in the country by the year 2025. PfP targets doing this by establishing co-learning partnerships between School Principals and Business Leaders. In turn, PfP aims to ensure that schools are placed at the centre of their communities. It's an interesting initiative. And in this interview, businesswoman Gillian Cox tells about a partnership she entered and the difference it made. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When Trump tweeted that he wanted to investigate land expropriation and "the large scale killing of farmers" in South Africa, he sent the rand into a tailspin. But the tweet says a lot more about the president than it does about EWC in South Africa. In this episode, Felicity Duncan and Alec Hogg discuss Trump's legal troubles and his attempt to divert attention from them with his incendiary tweet about South Africa. While the policy of EWC may be problematic, Trump's Twitter shot has more to do with his anxiety than any real concern with property rights. They also discuss Elon Musk's about-face on taking Tesla private and the many global successes of Boksburg boy Rowan Gormley. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s biggest fan in the investment world urged Tesla’s founder to stop his ideas of taking the company private. Catherine Wood of ARK Invest re-iterated her bullish earlier projections in an open letter on the money manager’s website where she reckons the company’s shares will be worth anything from $700 to $4,000 in five years. Musk, you may recall, threw any number of cats among Wall Street’s pigeons at the beginning of the month tweeting that he intended taking the company private at a price of $420 a share. After peaking fractionally below $380, the price has since fallen back to its current $320. Below the pre-tweet level and a long way from the “funding secured” price. So far, those who bet against Musk have been the big winners, with disclosed short sellers of Tesla stock making over $1bn in profit since his bombshell tweet. These cynics think Ms Wood’s valuations are a figment of an alternative reality. But where they do agree, although for different reasons, is that it’s v

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 is a fascinating one as Strauss & Co has sold nine of the ten most expensive paintings ever auctioned in South Africa and holds numerous artists’ sale records. Founded by the likes of top South African corporate legends, Elisabeth Bradley and Dr Conrad Strauss, as well as art doyen Stephan Welz, Strauss & Co really are the experts when it comes to investing in art. And van Rensburg gives us some of his best tips when it comes to buying art in this podcast. On BizNews.com, I've also posted his recommended reading for any future prospective art investors. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 families, there's a real risk that the quality of education at the country's universities could erode. The alternative option is sending your children to a university in another country. The problem with this is that you'll need to have started saving like yesterday. And not just putting a small amount aside - you'll actually need to save at least R17 000 per month per child, increasing that amount by 10% annually, according to Charlene Prinsloo, a wealth manager at AlphaWealth. Take a listen to my interview with Charlene to find out more. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 of deals which put control of its South African operations into black hands and now through the sale of its UK-headquartered global business into multinational Atalian. This is the story of one of SA's most successful private equity investments told by Fine and RMB Corvest CEO Mike Donaldson (pictured). See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

When I arrived for our interview at his farm near Bungay in Suffolk, Rowan Gormley, in shorts and a pink golf shirt, was busy watering plants in a small greenhouse. There was no indication from him that a few hours later he’d be hosting 300 people in a marquee set up between his homestead and the ruins of Mettingham Castle, built by one Sir John de Norwich in 1342. This historical structure might be on his grounds, but there’s nothing baronial about this fellow. As you’ll hear in what became an entrepreneurial masterclass. That’s Gormley’s style. Relaxed, informal, engaging. So we sat out in his garden during the height of a hot English summer, mercifully cooled by a breeze from the Atlantic a few miles away. In person his style reminded me a bit of Richard Branson, which is not really surprising considering that for some years Gormley worked closely with the famous founder of Virgin. The story starts in the South African industrial town called Boksburg…….a place better known for producing pugilists – lik

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 Platinum as hot stocks. Take a listen. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 the wake of the ongoing Turkish lira crisis, held its ground to a remarkable degree last week. It's a head-scratcher, until you remember that Abrahams' head rolled last week, sparking hope that the country may get a better NPA boss who can start to clean things up around here. Alec Hogg and Felicity Duncan discuss events at the NPA and their impact on markets. They also take a look at the ongoing chaos at Tesla and the role of the board in allowing it to continue. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 Y Combinator, which is a well-known American seed accelerator. Whalley's company has big ambitions to roll out their drones across the African continent as the rush for this technology gathers pace. Take a listen to Matthew's story. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 largest of its kind and, as it turns out, a hugely successful one for those who invested in it. They’ll be getting back, in cash, a multiple of the original capital that was put in, plus a significant stake that’s now being reinvested in YeboYethu 2. At almost R16.5bn this is the largest single, empowerment transaction in the ICT sector in SA to date. RMB Corporate Finance transactor, Kgolo Qwelane has been intimately involved in this year-long project that drew on experts in various departments at the bank. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Three years into a proposed ten year term, South Africa today ridded itself of the deeply tainted head of National Prosecuting Authority. Its Constitutional Court ruled that NPA head Shaun Abrahams - who has catapulted four levels into the top job from the legal equivalent of the backbenches - should never have been appointed in the first place. His elevation came after former president Jacob Zuma paid off the previous NPA head with a R17m golden handshake. According to former public prosecutor Glynnis Breytenbach, the appointment of Abrahams was “like taking a child who has learned to ride a bicycle with training wheels and giving him a jumbo jet and expecting everything to be OK.” Shortly after Abrahams took office, the NPA launched a series of unsuccessful actions against Breytenbach, former finance minister Pravin Gordhan and a number of other anti-corruption activists. Among those most affected by the Abrahams regime was Paul O’Sullivan of Forensics for Justice...O’Sullivan describes the former NPA na

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 karts while growing up as a teenager in the Cape. He did incredibly well in racing but then ran out of money in his early twenties and couldn't continue. But that didn't put him off as he spent the next few years of his life, along with his brother Marc Perel, building a hugely successful premium Wordpress themes business dubbed 'Obox' - the business ultimately helped David raise the capital he needed to restart his racing career at age 29. Fast forward a few years later and David is travelling the world as a top GT race driver with Ferrari-linked teams, living out his dream. He's also won a string of major GT races. A pretty incredible story. - Gareth van Zyl  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 as investors turn to the safety of US government debt. South Africa's status was hammered this week with a blistering New York Times article on David Mabuza and a harsh op-ed about expropriation in The Wall Street Journal. Does it all add up to a crisis for SA? And, in other news, what exactly is Elon Musk thinking these days and is his behaviour going to sink Tesla? Alec Hogg and Felicity Duncan have some answers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 30 years since he left the relative backwater of South Africa, Elon Musk has come to personify the American Dream: the brilliant, entrepreneurial immigrant transformed from pauper to billionaire through hard work and ingenuity. Musk has attracted fame and fortune through a series of audacious business adventures, always doubling up by risking his millions then billions on something still bigger. He has come close to being wiped out on a number of occasions, most famously when he bet heavily on a fourth Space X rocket after the first three had flopped. That time, he won. But after an unprecedented takeover offer by tweet this week, his critics believe that this time the boy from Pretoria has finally overreached. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

How did it all go so wrong between Musk and Wall Street? On a day when investors in his stock should be celebrating his promise to give them a quick profit, most just don’t believe him. The FT’s front page lead story mused that Musk might have been making a joke all along, with the $420 an all in-joke reference to April 20, a day celebrated by marijuana smokers. After all, over the past 15 years investors have injected billions of dollars into funding the Tesla dream, a company which has yet to make a profit. The relationship had been on the slide for a while because of missed forecasts, but that slippery slope got a good oiling in May when Musk threw his toys during the official Tesla’s earnings conference call with analysts and then indulged himself for half the call focusing all his attention on the deliciously named YouTube vlogger Galileo Russell who posed one sycophantic question after the other. It was enough to give pause to any investor. But the pro’s looked beyond that public meltdown. And cared

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 a retail and e-commerce giant whose market cap is around $542bn. It is also among the top 10 most valuable and biggest companies in the world. Ma is now very much in a giving back mode. And in this speech to an audience at an event held at Wits University, he launched the Jack Ma Foundation ‘Netpreneur’ Prize, a new programme created to support and fund African entrepreneurs who are working to address Africa’s most important challenges. The programme also targets furthering Africa's digital economy through local entrepreneurship. It's a must-listen speech for any entrepreneur. - Gareth van Zyl See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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 York, and only then onto an SAA plane all the way back down to OR Tambo International. However, I'm glad she made the long journey to attend a Free Market Foundation (FMF) event on property rights in Rosebank this week as I've had the privilege of conducting one of her first-ever media interviews in English (she's done plenty in Spanish). A member of the Board of Directors of the National Academy of Economic Sciences in Venezuela and a Full Professor at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), Levy-Carciente knows full-well the reasons for the economic damage done to her country. She's already made an impact in South Africa as an article she wrote on the stages of Venezuela's economic freefall went viral acr