Alec Hogg’s regular column covering investment, economics, moneycraft and, occasionally, something very personal.
Hi there, Have been thinking a lot about leadership this past week. And how much business and politics could learn from the sporting world. It was sparked by last Saturday when our webmaster Justin and I cracked an invitation to the big rugby game at Ellis Park. It was a rare spectacle that lived up … Read more
If I were ever to leave the entrepreneurial way and re-enter corporate life, Johann Redelinghuys is the man I’d ask to help open the right doors. Johann, an industrial psychologist and partner at Heidrick & Struggles, is the country’s top “headhunter”. We’ve known each other for a long time. So when he invited us to … Read more
My latest Rational Alternative column for the Financial Mail provided the opportunity for some navel gazing. That’s not terribly comfortable when you’re in an industry experiencing the sharp end of economist Joseph Schumpeter’s theory of Creative Destruction. But in every collapse, opportunities do emerge. So those of us in the mire seek inspiration from creative … Read more
Hi there, My sincere apologies. On Tuesday evening we worked with our hosting partner to switch Biznewz from its original .biz address to the recently acquired .com. This is a complicated process. During the transfer, a few nasty coding gremlins worked their way into the system. As a result, we had to hang up the … Read more
We’ve been paying a lot of attention to Capitec. It’s a phenomenal story of a micro-lender that has gone mainstream, ploughing in the high profits from its unsecured lending into creating a transaction fee base now approaching R1bn a year. But as serious problems have emerged for its core business, questions have been raised around … Read more
Hi there, It might have been a short week for the rest of South Africa, but we’ve had a belter on Biznewz. Traffic on the site has set a succession of records thanks to some superb blogs and articles as you’ll see from the list of our Best Read Stories at the bottom of the … Read more
I love writing a weekly column for the Financial Mail. It is a licence to challenge aspects of business life we all recognise are important, but don’t necessarily have time to think about. It also allows me to express rational opinions on subjects often too thorny for polite conversation. Like this week’s one on reciprocity. … Read more
People like me go on about the need to embrace complexity. How we must admit we know a lot less than we think; and how each new discovery is like peeling an onion – we’re suddenly confronted with a whole new layer of stuff that was previously hidden to us. So best to know what … Read more
My UNDICTATED column for Business Day this week has a look at something very close to the heart. In the mid 1990s, I ran Group Communications at ABSA. Among the responsibilities was media relations, an especially tricky task. The relationship between the bank and reporters was at rock bottom. It wasn’t exactly my forte’ either. … Read more
There’s much to be said for personal experience. My first stock market bubble was in 1987. Things were so crazy back then that my employer, Prescon, ran a daily share tipping service. Punters would phone an answering machine which would play my recorded “tip” of the day. They paid the equivalent of R8 000 a month … Read more