🔒 Alec Hogg: Dates, speakers for BizNews Investment Conference 3

The DA’s Federal chair Helen Zille will deliver the opening address at the third BizNews Investment Conference which kicks off on March 1 next year.

She heads a group of free-thinking keynote speakers which includes entrepreneur/activist Magda Wierzycka, crypto-fundi Stafford Masie, Arena chair and new SAA controlling shareholder Tshepo Mahloele and SA’s favourite stockbroker David Shapiro. Regulars Piet Viljoen, Nick Hudson and Rob Caskie will also be back.

BNIC#3 will again be held at Champagne Sports resort and will include a special concert at the nearby Drakensberg Boy’s Choir school. For full details of March’s gathering of the BizNews tribe, click here. Please book early – we had dozens of disappointed wanna-be participants on a long waiting list for BNIC#2 earlier this month.
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Another “call to action” this morning is today’s lunchtime webinar (at noon) where we discuss how to access Portugal’s Golden Visa (and EU residency) before the rules change in November. I’ll be hosting three specialists from 12 Star Capital who will explain how the €350k investment scheme works – and why the rules will tighten in three months’ time. You need to register beforehand to attend. Here’s the link: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/7018399741542175499 

Onto more usual fare…

Brooke Masters, Chief Business Commentator at our UK partners the Financial Times, is rapidly becoming one of my favourite columnists. A Harvard History graduate (summa cum laude), she’s a New Yorker who moved across the Atlantic a decade ago after 13 years at the Washington Post from whence she joined the FT’s US bureau.

Her grasp of global business is evident in the clarity and variety of her writing, which ranges from China to Big Tobacco; Academia to the Airline industry. Her latest contribution, on listed crypto exchange Coinbase’s battle with the US’s SEC, attacks the potentially foolhardy disdain by innovators for the establishment.

Masters reckons this approach is unhealthy – and encourages miscreant behaviour like that being exposed in the high profile trial of Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes. The story is republished below.

More for you to read today:

* The share price of BizNews portfolio counter Microsoft rose another 1.7% yesterday on the release of last night’s quarterly results. Here’s the story: Microsoft plans $60bn share buyback programme, raises dividend.

* Pretoria’s famous entrepreneurial export is back in the headlines as Elon Musk’s SpaceX launches first all-civilian flight to orbit.

* The WSJ series exposing expose double standards at the world’s social media giant continues with: Facebook tried to make its platform a healthier place. It got angrier instead.

* And two stories on China to help keep you informed on the drama happening in the Middle Kingdom. In a Jack Ma-type move, the country’s Reece Witherspoon equivalent has been “cancelled” by Beijing: China’s biggest movie star was erased from the internet and the mystery is why. And sobering news for SA’s commodity price-dependent currency as China’s economic recovery is looking gloomier.

PS The BizNews Wine Club, whose purpose is to bring you fine wines at special prices, is open for business. Click here to observe what’s available from Iona, our founding supplier. Free delivery to all major SA cities.

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