By Alec Hogg
- Africa’s tallest building, a 234m Sandton skyscaper called The Leonardo, is set to open next month according to a report by Bloomberg. The new building is 10 metres taller than the Carlton Centre which opened in 1972 in the Johannesburg CBD. Developed by entrepreneur Bart Dorrestein’s Legacy Group with financial support from Nedbank, The Leonardo is a mixed use building housing 254 apartments; a three floor, six bedroom penthouse; five floors of office space; and a large retail area at the bottom. The building will also serve as a hotel with one bedroom apartments charged out at R7,250 a night or R54,000 a month. The R3bn project is the flagship in Legacy’s 23 hotel and luxury residential complexes on the continent, ranging from Sandton’s Michelangelo Hotel through to Hotel le Cristal in Gabon and Labadi Beach Hotel in Ghana. The Leonardo will mean four of Africa’s ten tallest buildings are in Johannesburg, but the top position will be temporary as construction recently began on the 80m taller Pinnacle Tower in Nairobi, Kenya.
- The risk premium on crude oil will be back in focus today after news that Iran could be preparing another strike similar to the one which took out half of Saudi Arabia’s production a week ago. Quoting people familiar with the matter, the Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that Houthi militants in Yemen told foreign diplomats they are being pressed by Iran to play a role in another imminent attack. The warnings came after reports of disagreement within Houthi ranks about how closely to align with Iran, which has supported the movement against a Saudi-led coalition in the Yemeni civil war which has killed over 100,000 people. On Friday, the Houthi fighters cited the Iranian request when offering a unilateral cease-fire to Saudi Arabia.
- South Africa’s global image took a knock over the weekend when the influential New York Times quoted returned Nigerians saying they were driven out of the country by longstanding South African hatred of foreigners. The article is based on interviews with some of the more than 500 Nigerians who returned home last week courtesy of a Nigerian State-sponsored airlift. It quotes 55 year old Socarvin Onuoha, a Nigerian entrepreneur, who owned a cellphone shop in SA for a decade, saying “If I had stayed, I would have died.” The NYT says despite SA president Cyril Ramaphosa’s dispatching of envoys to offer his nation’s sincere apologies and a promise to arrest perpetrators, the Nigerian government is continuing to lay on flights for any of its citizens who want to return home. The newspaper told its global audience the latest xenophobic attacks, which caused 12 deaths, were the third such outbreaks after 60 fatalities in 2008 and seven in 2015. Nigerians who spoke to the US newspaper say they have experienced particular prejudice from South Africans, often stereotyped as drug dealers and thieves.
- The Dutch authorities have laid a claim of £902m in unpaid taxes against JSE-listed heavyweight British American Tobacco according to London’s Guardian newspaper. The claim is based on allegations of tax avoidance through transfer pricing and relates to money channelled through the Netherlands between 2003 and 2016. BAT, which is headquartered in the UK and has strong South African connections, employs over 60,000 people worldwide and generates more than £8bn a year in profit. The company is disputing the claim, referenced in its 2018 annual report. A spokesman told The Guardian: “BAT fully complies with all applicable tax legislation in each of the 200 markets where we operate around the world.” The Dutch tax authorities are targeting numerous multinationals over tax avoidance, with the claim against BAT the biggest thus far. The share price of BAT was little changed on the JSE on Friday.