JOHANNESBURG – The state-owned freight and logistics company Transnet has secured R12 billion ($853 million) for its locomotive programme, it announced on Monday, bringing to R48 billion the capital raised to buy the trains. Transnet said it sourced the latest money via a club loan from Absa, Nedbank, Bank of China, Futuregrowth Asset Managers and Old Mutual Specialised Finance.   “I think […]

JOHANNESBURG – The embattled South African Airways has appointed a new CEO after only four months, its seventh chief in four years, after the airline faced renewed challenges from its pilots and staff, according to news reports on Wednesday. SAA said in a statement that Thuli Mpshe will be replaced as acting chief by the head of technical […]

Talking to foreign fund managers about South Africa is sobering. I spent last week doing that in New York. Billions of dollars that were directed into our shares and bonds over the past two decades are being pulled out. The only fund managers who are smiling are those that have gone short on South African assets, […]

The name is derived from “happy prospect” in Afrikaans, and once upon a time, life and the gold haul were both good at the Blyvooruitzicht Gold Mine, 50 miles west of Johannesburg. But two years after the mine’s owners abandoned it because it was unprofitable, sewage runs in the streets of the old mining village, […]

Yes, the rand is plunging, unemployment is rocketing and the country’s debt is increasing, but South Africa remains one of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa that has been growing faster than other countries around the world, according to a new report. The report by financial news agency Bloomberg on Tuesday, compiled from various data since 2005, said that South Africa’s Gross […]

ABUJA – Shares in telecommunications giant MTN reportedly fell to a three-year low on Tuesday after the Nigerian Communications Commission on Monday fined the company $5.2 billion for failing to disconnect users with unregistered SIM cards. Nigeria is apparently MTN’s biggest market by subscribers. The penalty could wipe out more than two years of MTN’s profits, one news report said. The NCC […]

TORONTO – In two roundups of the world’s best MBA programs, the University of Cape Town came out in the Top 50 of one, and was ranked best in Africa in the other. The highly regarded Canadian magazine Corporate Knights, which is a supplement to the Washington Post and subtitles itself The Magazine for Clean Capitalism, […]

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – India hosts its biggest-ever Africa summit this week as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks to challenge China’s dominance on a continent that is blessed with vast natural resources and has the world’s fastest-growing population. New Delhi wants to project its soft power and historical ties to Africa, in contrast to China’s […]

STELLENBOSCH – The South African mobile social network Mxit, once dubbed the largest social network in Africa, has closed down commercial operations after a decade in business, according to news reports. All of Mxit’s intellectual property and technology assets will be donated to independent public benefit organisation The Reach Trust. Reports said that Mxit, which was launched in 2005, […]

Prime global residential rents are struggling to grow, but Cape Town and Zurich have substantially bucked the trend, according to the latest Knight Frank global rental index. In Cape Town prime rents – the top five percent of the market – ended the year to June 2015 10.2 percent higher, compared to the world average […]

What if we won the Rugby World Cup? I would guess that question has been asked many times in the last few decades. The interesting thing is that we have actually shown the world on a few occasions that we can be a nation of winners! Yes, we have actually won and defied many sceptics in the process. […]

LONDON – The South African brewer SABMiller has agreed to a $104-billion takeover bid by its larger rival Anheuser-Busch InBev, it was reported on Tuesday. It will apparently be the largest-ever takeover of a British-listed company. According to one news report, the takeover is also one of the top five mergers in corporate history, and will […]

JOHANNESBURG – South African companies are more likely than their counterparts abroad to stay away from potentially corrupt deals and will pull out of a deal they discover is corrupt even if they have already invested in it, but also feel strongly that not paying a bribe could hurt business, according to a new survey. The annual ‘International attitudes […]

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – SABMiller, the world’s second largest brewer, has promptly rejected an improved offer from bigger rival Anheuser-Busch InBev, saying on Wednesday that its 68 billion-pound valuation was insufficient. Earlier Belgium-based AB InBev said it was willing to pay 42.15 pounds in cash per SABMiller share, having already made two prior offers at 38 […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Volkswagen’s South African unit said on Monday all its vehicles in Africa’s most advanced economy are compliant with environmental laws, following the emissions testing scandal, which has rocked the global car industry. The South African business said its vehicles comply with the published CO2 values and were technically safe and roadworthy. “There […]

JOHANNESBURG – The much praised and often vilified French economist Thomas Piketty delivered the 13th Annual Nelson Mandela lecture at Johannesburg’s Soweto campus on Saturday, spending much of his well-applauded speech on inequality. Pointing out that up to 65 percent of all income earned in South Africa goes to the top 10 percent, he said the […]

When Truworths announced two weeks ago that it was in talks to take over British shoe retailer Office, the international business community was alerted once again to a brazen, if not new, player on the horizon – South Africa. Slowly but surely since sanctions ended, South African businesses have been spreading their wings (think only of the gobbling up, […]

LONDON – British Airways has announced it will cut two of its seasonal flights to Cape Town in 2016, which some have ascribed to the new visa restrictions for South Africa. BA said the flight to Cape Town on Thursdays and Saturdays, and the return flight on Fridays and Saturdays would end on March 27, 2016, […]

On different continents last week, two South African women were in the news for their remarkable achievements in mining and justice. In New York, Daphne Mashile-Nkosi, chairwoman of Kalagadi Manganese, was named the Most Outstanding Woman in Business at the 2015 African Business Awards. At the same time, in South Africa, Justice Mandisa Muriel Maya was appointed the […]

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Whether it’s selling pensions, pasta or toothpicks, investors in Africa have been targeting the booming middle class. But a year of diving commodity prices has exposed how much the continent, and its consumers, still rely on exporting resources. A decade of growth above five percent in sub-Saharan African economies has drawn a […]

The three most valuable corporate brands in South Africa are multinational mobile company MTN, Vodacom and Sasol, according to a Top 50 list released on Tuesday. The announcement was made by Brand South Africa and Brand Finance Africa in Johannesburg. The other top 10 spots were taken by Standard Bank, FNB, Woolworths, Nedbank, Absa, Investec and, in 10th position, […]

Solar energy is in the air right now, and in more ways than one. South Africa’s biggest solar farm, one of the world’s largest, has been on line for almost a year. Google is eyeing out South Africa more and more for its new foray into solar energy. And a world-leading team from Stellenbosch will, […]

Africa has 163,000 dollar millionaires, and almost 30 percent of them live in South Africa, according to a report by a Johannesburg-based global research company. The report – released last week by New World Wealth (NWW) and done in conjunction with AfrAsia bank –  found that Johannesburg has the highest number of dollar millionaires in Africa (23,400), more than double […]

I am getting serious questions this week whether with the Rand hitting such weak lows, now is the time to repatriate money from overseas. That’s akin to asking whether we are hitting the Rand bottom. In 2000-2001 it took a while for certainty to get home that things really were out of control for a […]

The South African Rand traded at almost R21.22 to the British pound today (Monday), its worst level ever. The  U.S. dollar is R13.94, meanwhile, slightly up on it worst-ever level of R14.07 on 24 August. The news comes two days before Rand Merchant Bank and the Bureau for Economic Research are to release their business confidence index […]