Duarte da Silva: One piece at a time

Barlow Rand was the greatest industrial house South Africa has built, and inside it sat Rand Mines, the oldest mining house on the Rand. It was not stolen and it did not fail. The men who were paid to run it let it go, one piece at a time, and the last of them bought what was left from the shareholders who employed him. Sixty-three per cent of the votes said no, and he got it anyway. Nobody broke the law. The offence was passiveness, and the numbers convict them. By a former Barlows analyst, who called its management the dead hand in 1997 and recommended the share all the same.By Dr Duarte F da Silva.Thomas Barlow & Sons was founded in Durban in 1902 and listed in 1941. In 1971 Punch Barlow bought Rand Mines from Anglo American for shares and made it Barlow Rand. By 1989 the group earned a billion rand and employed about 240,000 people. In 2025 the chief executive's family trust and the Zahid Group bought what was left, a Caterpillar dealer with a starch mill, for R120 a share. I make five charges. First, two men built and the rest did not. Punch built the group and bought the oldest gold house on the Rand for paper at the bottom of the cycle, and he was right. Tony Phillips nearly quadrupled earnings in eight years. Rosholt made the group bigger by buying. Thomson was a caretaker. Clewlow and Sewela were undertakers: one buried the mining house, the other the listed company. Second, Clewlow broke up the group because the books of the day said he should, and let the gold go without a fight. Barlow received 74 per cent of the gold house in January 1993, and a year later it was selling the last of it. At the price of that last sale the whole stake was worth about R220 million. Harmony, one of its four mines, is worth R163 billion today. Third, the company that was kept went nowhere. The Barlow share itself returned 3.7 per cent a year from 1990 to 2026, against 10.8 for the all-share index, both before dividends. Earnings were 1,171 cents a share in 2006, with the cement still inside, and 810 cents in 2025. Fourth, the chief executive bought the company at R120 while he was running it. The board tested that price against a valuation and never against a market. The head-office land went into a half-owned venture with no published valuation, and his unvested awards are to be settled at his own offer price. Fifth, the managers' defence fails. The shareholders were paid, and a Barlow Rand share bought in 1990, with every piece kept, returned about what the market did. But the money came from Tiger Brands, Reunert, PPC and the others, after they had left. The companies that were set free did the work. The house that set them free was run by men who built nothing, until one of them, with a partner, could afford to buy it..THE CHARGEI. Passiveness, and where it endedBarlow Rand was the greatest industrial house this country has built. It was not stolen, and it did not fail. It was let go. For thirty years the men who were paid to run it sold it, handed it out and shrank it, one piece at a time, and each of them had a sensible reason for his piece. After Punch Barlow only one of them, Tony Phillips, built anything. That is the charge, and I will not soften it: passiveness. It is not a crime in law, and nobody in this story broke the law. It did more damage than most crimes do.The gold went at the bottom of the market because nobody would fight for it. The company that was kept stood still for a decade because nobody asked more of the man running it. The last piece was sold to the chief executive because the board would not ask anyone else what it was worth. The managers' defence is that the shareholders were paid. They were, mostly by companies the group no longer owned. That is no defence of the men who stayed.This is where it ended. At nine in the morning on 26 February 2025 the shareholders of Barloworld met online. They were asked to approve a scheme under which a consortium led by their own chief executive would buy the company for R120 a share. Of the votes cast, 63.37 per cent were against. The consortium's own 43.5 million shares could not vote. Of the other 143.0 million, 121.2 million were voted and about 76.8 million said no. That is 53.7 per cent of every share entitled to vote. In the same session shareholders refused, by 61.45 per cent, to pay the independent directors for their work on the scheme.Two days later the consortium opened a standby offer at the same R120. The circular had disclosed it from the start. It needed 90 per cent acceptance, a condition the consortium could waive.The Public Investment Corporation held 21.9 per cent. It had voted against the scheme and said it was "concerned with corporate governance standards at Barloworld and the steps its board followed". On 23 April it undertook to accept the standby offer. In return the consortium promised a 13.5 per cent empowerment transaction once the company was private.By 30 June the consortium had acceptances for 34.4 per cent of the shares outside treasury, and it lowered the 90 per cent condition to 51. The Competition Tribunal approved the merger on 15 August. Its conditions were the empowerment promise and a two-year bar on merger-related retrenchments. The offer went unconditional on 1 October.On 4 October the Takeover Regulation Panel ruled on a complaint by Protea Capital Management. The consortium had been paying R118.80, net of an interim dividend. The Panel said the price was R120. The consortium disagreed and paid.By 7 November 2025 holders of 139.5 million shares had accepted, 97.6 per cent of those offered. With its own shares the consortium held 96.5 per cent of the company. It gave notice of compulsory acquisition on 28 November and paid for the last 3.5 million shares on 22 January 2026. The company that had listed in 1941 at seven shillings and sixpence left the exchange on 27 January 2026.The cash paid was R17.16 billion, the sum Standard Bank had guaranteed. The "R23 billion" of the headlines is R123.10 times every share in issue, including the consortium's own shares and the treasury shares.The owners said no, and it made no difference. Nine months later nearly all of them had sold to the same buyers at the same price, the largest of them in return for a promise to be kept after the others had gone. A house that once employed 240,000 people ended as a company whose shareholders could get no better offer than their own chief executive's, because their board had agreed not to look for one. WHY A BARLOWS MANThe author's standingI covered Barlows for Smith Borkum Hare, the Johannesburg house of Merrill Lynch, in 1997 and 1998. My report of 7 July 1997 is the plate at the end. It valued the parts and found the whole worth R59 to R61 a share, against a price of R47.95. It set a price objective of R63.78 and called the share "the lowest risk exposure to South African fixed investment and the economic cycle". Its headline was "Damn the Torpedoes", and it was not a compliment. It was a criticism of a management that pressed on with breaking up the business without weighing what it was doing. The asset I liked most was the one they could not touch, the IT business. When I presented the report, with Clewlow at the helm, I spoke of "the dead hand of Barlows". I recommended the share all the same, and it halved within fifteen months.I come back to the company as a gold man, and I come back angry. I have spent recent months on other houses that founders built and professionals sold. I admired this one. I was a critic of its management when I was its analyst, and nothing since has changed my mind about them. Barlows was one of the great entrepreneurial names of this country and it has become a forgotten story. There is no full biography of Punch Barlow, and the company's own history fits on a web page. The house deserved better men, and it deserves to be written down, with its numbers. PART ONE · BUILDING THE GROUPII. Thomas Barlow & Sons, 1902 to 1979The house was built by people who took risks with their own name on the door. They are the measure of everyone who came after.Ernest Barlow fought in the Boer War and stayed. In 1902 he borrowed a thousand pounds and opened Thomas Barlow & Sons in two rented rooms in Durban. He sold woollen blankets and coats under the name of his family's Lancashire cotton firm. Within five years the business was engineering supplies. He opened a Johannesburg branch in 1920 and died in 1921 of wounds taken at Delville Wood. His widow Anne became governing director and held the company for her sons.Charles Sydney Barlow, called Punch, was born in Durban in 1905. He went to Clifton and Cambridge, won four rugby Blues and played two first-class matches for Somerset. He came home in 1927. The company's histories say he bet a Natal cane farmer that a machine could out-plough a span of oxen, and won. He then sailed to the United States, and on 17 August 1927 Caterpillar signed Thomas Barlow & Sons as its dealer for Natal.He was a director at 24, managing director at 32 and chairman until his death. In 1941 he listed the company in Johannesburg at seven shillings and sixpence a share, by reversing it into W.R. Boustred, which was already listed. In June of that year he bought Vergelegen, Lady Phillips's estate at Somerset West, at auction. His wife Cynthia restored the house and gardens, and the King and Queen stayed there in 1947.The company supplied the Allied forces through the war and made what could no longer be imported. After the war it sold mining equipment in South West Africa and Rhodesia. It bought a Ford dealership on the East Rand in 1959. Through the sixties it added steel, handling equipment, consumer electronics, timber and British subsidiaries. It listed in London in 1969 and by 1970 controlled more than seventy companies. Manufacturing was only a tenth of revenue. The group was a distributor and a holder of franchises, and the franchise that mattered was Caterpillar.In 1966 it exchanged R12 million of shares with South African Breweries, and SAB men joined the board.That exchange is usually told as SAB buying into Barlows. It was a defence. Neither company took the other's shares onto its own books. Both blocks went into Barsab Investment Trust, which the two companies owned half each. Ten years later the Financial Times said what the trust was for: "to make both immune to takeover while acting as a vehicle for takeovers itself".The block that sat over Barlows was 22 per cent of the company at the start, and half of it was Barlows' own. Punch had put a fifth of his company's votes where no bidder could buy them, and he paid for it in paper. He built the trust with Ted Sceales, SAB's chief executive, who died after a car accident in 1967.Barsab was listed and had outside shareholders, and it bought businesses. They included Plascon paints, two shoe companies, an aircraft distributor called Placo, 35 per cent of Metropolitan Board of Executors and, in 1972, a quarter of Afcol, the country's largest furniture maker. The public did badly out of it. Barsab's share touched 700 cents in the bull market of 1969. It was delisted at 35 cents after the two parents bought out the outside holders under a scheme approved in December 1972.Barsab was taken apart in two steps, both with Rosholt as chief executive. In the 1972 scheme SAB took the shoe companies and the Afcol stake, and Plascon stayed with Barlow Rand. Barsab was left holding the two blocks of shares, Placo and the trust company.In January 1976 the blocks went home. Barsab then held 11.1 million SAB shares, about 8 per cent of the brewer, and 6.47 million Barlow Rand shares, 6.6 per cent of a much larger company. SAB took its own shares back. Barlow Rand paid SAB about R2 million to square the two halves and took the trust whole.It then offered the 6.47 million Barlow Rand shares to its own shareholders, seven for every hundred held, at 225 cents against a market price of 315. The offer raised R14.6 million, or R12.5 million after the payment to SAB. The money went against R34 million of short-term borrowings, and debt fell from 58 to 53 per cent of equity.So Barlows never owned a slice of the Breweries that it later lost. It owned half of a trust. Its half of the SAB shares, about 4 per cent of the brewer, was swapped for SAB's half of the Barlow Rand shares. Nothing went to a third party. The shareholders who took up the offer got their shares R5.8 million below the market.The cost was of another kind. Punch's shield had worked for ten years and cost his shareholders nothing. Rosholt cashed what was left of it for R12.5 million of debt relief, at a discount of 29 per cent, and left the register open. Six years later Anglo's group held 12.7 per cent and the board feared a bid. The protection had to be bought again, this time with new shares issued to Old Mutual until it held 23 per cent. The first shield was half the company's own. The second belonged entirely to the Mutual. It was the first time a successor cashed in something Punch had built. It was not the last.Punch opposed the National Party in public, which few of his peers did. In the early 1970s the company said in print that segregation, low pay and limited schooling for its black workers hurt its performance. It set up an advancement programme that the historians judge inadequate for its time and ahead of its peers. Punch died in office at Sotogrande on 1 June 1979, aged 74. Barlow Rand's share closed at R5.87 on the day of his funeral. THE CORNER HOUSEIII. Rand Mines, and the purchase of 1971Barlow Rand was made by a purchase from Anglo American, and the purchase rested on a friendship. Punch founded the River Club in Johannesburg in 1966, with Mike Rosholt beside him. The club records that Harry Oppenheimer was among Punch's friends and that the two men put up its first capital. Michael Cardo's life of Oppenheimer places the Barlows among Harry's Johannesburg friends in the 1930s and calls the two men wartime housemates. In 1956 Punch himself put the extension of the Caterpillar franchise down to "the close friendship that has existed for many years between our company and the Anglo American Corporation through their chairman, Mr. Harry Oppenheimer".The company's own book of 1989 says "a family friend" agreed to support the bid for Rand Mines, and calls the result "a major coup". After Punch died, Oppenheimer opened the memorial fountain that his widow Kay put up in Sandton in 1982. When Tom Barlow sold Vergelegen in October 1987, the buyer was Anglo American Farms, at R22 million.Rand Mines was registered in the Transvaal on 22 February 1893 with a capital of £400,000. It held the deep-level claims of H. Eckstein & Company, the Johannesburg office of Wernher, Beit & Company of London. The market called the firm the Corner House. Within five years the £1 shares were £45.Rand Mines was the first house to go for the deep levels and the first to run its mines as a group from one office. By 1913 the Corner House group controlled 37 per cent of the Rand's gold. Its mines included Crown Mines, City Deep, Durban Roodepoort Deep and East Rand Proprietary. It opened Blyvooruitzicht, the first mine on the West Wits line, in 1942, and founded Harmony in the Free State in 1950. It owned Witbank Colliery and later Duvha. It also owned twelve thousand acres of Johannesburg, the land under the Central Rand mines, which became Rand Mines Properties.In 1910 and 1911 the London partners put everything but their diamonds into Central Mining & Investment Corporation. Rand Mines ran the Rand for Central Mining from the Corner House building until it sold the building to Barclays in 1964.By 1957 the Corner House was run from London, 6,000 miles from its mines. Its own chairman said six of its twelve mines were marginal. It had about £8.3 million in cash from the sale of Trinidad Oil. Its shares stood at about half the value of its assets, and half of them were held in Paris and could not vote. A raider came.He was Sam Glazer, a Johannesburg property dealer who had tried for Ohlsson's Breweries the year before. In May 1957 he took a suite at the Savoy and announced that he held a tenth of the ordinary shares. He said he would pay £5 a share in cash for two-thirds of them, against a price of 64s 6d. He never made the bid.Within a fortnight a syndicate bought 80 per cent of the preference shares from the institutions, with the board's blessing. It was led by Charles Engelhard, the American platinum and metals man, and included Anglo American, Union Corporation, Rothschilds and Schroders. The Economist called it "the most gentlemanly takeover on record". A meeting on 30 May created new unissued shares to see off any second bidder. By 8 June, the Economist wrote, "Mr Glazer's opportunity, if he ever had one, seems to have passed".The syndicate formed Rand American Investments in Johannesburg in August 1957, with Engelhard in the chair. Thos. Barlow & Sons was a founding subscriber. On 30 August 1957 Punch joined the Rand Mines board in the same list as Engelhard. He also ran Engelhard's New York fund, the American-South African Investment Company, as its managing director. That is how a Durban tractor dealer came to sit on the board of the Corner House fourteen years before he bought it.In 1960 Punch proposed to Harry Oppenheimer that Barlows should take over Rand Mines and manage Central Mining. Oppenheimer wrote to Engelhard that he found the idea "startling" and not attractive. The letters are in the Brenthurst Library.Engelhard became chairman of Rand Mines in May 1958, and the house came under Anglo's control through Rand Selection. The company histories say Anglo "did little to revive it". Rand Mines had no mines on the Far West Rand and nothing in the Free State beyond Harmony. It was "seriously ailing". Engelhard died on 2 March 1971.Why the house was for sale in 1971 follows from who had been running it. For thirteen years its chairman was an American who lived in New Jersey and sat on Anglo's board. He had said in 1958 that he could hold the chair only to the end of 1959. He held it until he died. Anglo administered the house from outside its own group and put nothing new into it. The Central Rand mines it had been built on were at the end of their lives. Its one large industrial venture, Middelburg Steel, was losing money on a stockpile it could not sell.When Engelhard died the house had no chairman, no mines with a future and an owner who did not want to run it. It also had a director of fourteen years' standing who had wanted it since 1960 and now ran the third-largest industrial group in the country. Three months later Barlows bought it.Anglo's annual report for 1971 records the terms. Under a scheme effective on 1 June 1971, all 3.4 million Rand Mines shares were exchanged for 20.4 million new Barlow shares, six for one. The company became Barlow Rand on 28 June. Barlows had 63.6 million shares before the deal and 84.0 million after it. Rand Mines' holders took 24.3 per cent of the enlarged company. Every existing Barlow holder, the family included, kept three-quarters of what he had held. Anglo and Charter Consolidated were the largest of the new holders, and a study of 1984 put Anglo at 12.7 per cent in 1982.The histories value the paper at R39 million. At that figure Barlows gave about a third of its own value for the house.It was not cheap. Rand Mines "was found to be overvalued", and Middelburg Steel & Alloys was "in a disastrous state". Barlow Rand began an investigation on the day Rand Mines became a subsidiary and reported on 27 September 1971. Middelburg, in which Rand Mines held 38.6 per cent, would lose about R4.5 million that year on stainless steel it could not sell. About R9.7 million was written off against reserves dated before the purchase, so that Barlow Rand's earnings a share "will not be affected". The histories put the total written off at R17.9 million. Punch's own verdict, quoted by the Financial Times in 1993, was that "our acquisition of Rand Mines brought us many more problems than we anticipated."He never said in public why he bought it. What he saw can be read off the deal. The official gold price had been US$35 an ounce since 1934. The free market, allowed to float since March 1968, was at US$41 in the year of the purchase. The mining houses were priced as wasting assets, and Rand Mines was the weakest of the six.He paid in his own paper, six Barlow shares for one, and no cash. For that he got Harmony, twenty-one years old and about to become the largest mill in the country. He got Witbank Colliery, twelve thousand acres of Johannesburg, and the standing of a mining house.On 15 August 1971, two months after the deal took effect, the United States stopped converting dollars into gold for foreign central banks. The price rose for nine years. Whether he foresaw it is unknown. The deal was done before it happened. It cost a quarter of the company, given to Rand Mines' holders, and the risks of Rand Mines' businesses.How he dealt with what he had bought is documented from the first week. He made the Middelburg problem public within three months and wrote it off against reserves that predated him. He gave Rand Mines a Barlow board on 29 July 1971, with himself and Rosholt on it, and let the old Corner House directors go.Harmony was merged with Anglovaal's Merriespruit and Virginia in 1973 and run as a "super mine". Duvha was opened on the coal. Rand Mines Properties was made a subsidiary in March 1973. The Central Rand mines were allowed to close as the reef ran out. Barlow Rand's net profit more than doubled between 1972 and 1974, to R53.9 million.Then gold went to US$850. In the year to September 1979, Punch's last, the group's operating profit rose by half to R290 million, and the mining arm earned R65.6 million before tax. In 1980 net profit went from R201 million to R343 million, with "gold and coal profits substantially higher". The dividend went from 38 cents to 58 cents in two years. He did not live to see the second of those years.The purchase has two parts, and they point in opposite directions. The bet on gold was right within two years and paid for a decade. He bought a gold house for paper before the price moved, and the group held it through the last gold boom of the century.The industrial side of the house was the calamity, and he knew it in 1971. Middelburg Steel was the first. In 1993 the Financial Times listed the rest: the platinum venture through Barmines, the lossmaking gold mines, the closures of the Vansa vanadium plant and the Barbrook gold mine, and the sale of Middelburg Steel. It wrote that "none of these redounds to Barlows' credit". Stephen Cranston's judgment in 2025 was that the purchase "nearly sunk them".He was no lunatic, and he is the only man in this story who made a bet of that size on anything. He bought a sick house cheaply with his shareholders' paper. He was right about the one asset that mattered for as long as he lived, and he left his successors the rest. He ran the mines as a division and left them to professionals. In the year of his death they were the most profitable thing he owned. He acted, and he was right more often than he was wrong. That is the difference between him and every chairman who followed. THE HOUSE AT ITS LARGESTIV. Barlow Rand under Rosholt, 1979 to 1991Mike Rosholt was born in Johannesburg in 1920. He was an accountant who spent three and a half years as a prisoner of war and passed his final examinations in the camps. Punch brought him onto the board in 1963. He was chief executive from 1972 and chairman from Punch's death until January 1991.He signed the Sullivan Principles and chaired the Urban Foundation. With P.W. Botha in the audience, he told a conference that "business does not believe, as the government appears to, that there is unlimited time for the process of change". After Barlows he founded the Joint Education Trust and chaired the National Business Initiative for fourteen years. He died in February 2018 at 97.Under him the group reached its largest. Sales rose from R3.4 billion in 1980 to R26.4 billion in 1989. In that year it earned R1.06 billion and employed about 240,000 people. It topped the Financial Mail's ranking and stood seventy-ninth on the Fortune 500.It grew by purchase. It took Reed International's 63 per cent of Nampak in 1978 and CG Smith in 1980. It bought Reunert in 1980, Tiger Oats and ICS from Old Mutual in 1982, Bibby in 1984, the Hyster dealerships in Britain and America, and Finanzauto in Spain in 1992.Rosholt made the group bigger. He did not make it better. Profits peaked in 1989 and were falling when he left, and he had paid for Tiger Oats in votes.By then the family did not control the house. A list of large shareholders does not show what a family owns through nominees or trusts, so it proves nothing about the Barlows' wealth. It does show control, and control is measured in votes.Three issues of shares diluted the family. The 1966 exchange put 22 per cent of Barlows into Barsab. The 1971 issue gave Rand Mines' holders 24.3 per cent and cut every earlier holder to three-quarters of his stake. Then in April 1982 the board took Tiger Oats and ICS from Old Mutual for new shares, and Old Mutual went from 5.2 to 23 per cent.The Mutual's own history says it "became the dominant shareholder in the Barlow Rand group". Mendel Kaplan's account of Tiger Oats says the exchange "gave it effective control of Barlow Rand". Every register after that puts the Mutual first: 35.4 per cent in 1985, 34.1 in 1989, 34.7 in 1992 and 23.4 in 1998.The Barlows were rich. Punch kept Vergelegen, a farm in the Natal Midlands called Bosch Hoek, a house abroad, a polo string and a racehorse Harry Oppenheimer gave him. He sat on the boards of Standard Bank and Syfrets. As late as 1973 Anthony Hocking called Barlows "a family business". But a family business in management is not a family business in votes, and by 1982 the votes were the Mutual's.The last Barlow in the executive was Punch's younger brother Peter, joint deputy chairman with Rosholt, who died in 1975. No Barlow sat on the board after 1979. What the family kept through nominees or trusts is not published. When the house was taken apart, there was no Barlow on the board or among the large holders to say anything about it. The house had passed to hired men and an insurance company.The founder's son did not follow him, and the son's life explains why. Tom Barlow went to Cambridge like his father. There, in 1956, a fellow South African, Michael Cassidy, led him to an evangelical conversion. In 1959 he sold his polo ponies to pay Cassidy's passage to a seminary in California, and Cassidy went on to found African Enterprise. By 1965 Tom was a missionary with the Dorothea Mission of Pretoria, working in southern, east and central Africa.In 1966 he took over Vergelegen, where his mother Cynthia had lived since the divorce. He farmed it for twenty-one years and sold it to Anglo American Farms in 1987. He never sat on the Barlow Rand board. A family tradition says Punch wrote him off for wanting none of the business. Nothing in writing says so, and the facts are enough without it. The son chose a mission. The father, from the day Barlow Rand was formed, put the company in the hands of an accountant.Punch's second wife, Kay, had been married to Eric Gallo, the founder of Gallo Records and the Barlows' neighbour in Johannesburg. Her son Peter Gallo married Punch's daughter, and Bosch Hoek passed to him when Punch died. The business went to nobody in the family. The house carried the name of a family that no longer owned or ran it.The structure Rosholt left was the founder's. A head office in Sandton held the shares and set the standards, and the operating companies ran themselves. Rosholt chose his successor as Punch had chosen him. Warren Clewlow had joined in 1963, sat on the board from 1974, and was deputy chairman and chief executive from 1985. He took the chair in January 1991. Punch had chosen an accountant. The accountant chose another. PART TWO · BREAKING IT UPV. Clewlow dismantles Rand Mines and unbundles the group, 1992 to 1994Clewlow did two things in two years, and neither was building. He broke up the group because the fashion of the day said a conglomerate should be broken up. He let the oldest gold house on the Rand go at the bottom of a twelve-year bear market, at a price that valued all of it at about R300 million. The market cheered the first. I do not.Warren Clewlow was born in Durban in 1936 and joined Barlows at 27. He was chief executive from 1985 and chairman from January 1991 to January 2007. When he took the chair the group was in decline. Attributable profit fell from R1 billion in 1989 to R849 million in 1992. The gold price had been falling in dollars for twelve years. The ANC wanted a commission into the conglomerates.He dealt with the mining house first. An agreement signed on 26 November 1992 split Rand Mines into three. Coal went to Randcoal. Gold went to a new company, Randgold & Exploration, which took the mineral rights and the holdings in four gold mines. Property stayed in Rand Mines Properties.In January 1993 Rand Mines handed the gold company's shares to its own holders, two for one. Barlow Rand owned 74 per cent of Rand Mines and received 22.2 million of the 29.8 million shares. It gave its own shareholders six of them for every hundred Barlow Rand shares and kept about 35 per cent. Randgold & Exploration was listed on 1 February 1993.Then came the group. On 23 June 1993 Barlow Rand announced that it would unbundle CG Smith and Reunert. On 9 August it added Rand Mines, which then held 77 per cent of Randcoal, and Rand Mines Properties. To repay debt it first sold 7.5 per cent of each of the four companies to Old Mutual for R607 million in cash. That price valued the four at about R8.1 billion.The rest went to shareholders in January and February 1994. For every 100 Barlow Rand shares they received 121.89 CG Smith, 69.66 Reunert, 19.76 Rand Mines and 3.89 Rand Mines Properties.In October 1993 the Financial Mail broke down the Barlow Rand share price. It put 39 per cent on CG Smith, 18 on Reunert, 5 on Rand Mines, 1 on Rand Mines Properties and 37 on the company kept. On about 196 million shares at about R38, that is roughly R4.7 billion handed out and R2.8 billion kept, by my arithmetic. The company that remained, Barlow Limited, kept the Caterpillar dealership, the motor dealers, Pretoria Portland Cement, Plascon, the timber and building supplies, the forklifts, Bibby and Finanzauto..The family tree: what came out of Barlow Rand and what came out of those, with the year each left its parent and its market value at the close of 13 November 2026 or its buy-out price. Grey lines were wound up, handed on for a nominal sum or are private. Sources in the references..The Financial Times described on 11 August 1993 how the decision was made. It was not a long-considered plan. Clewlow had handed the chief executive's job to Derek Cooper in January 1992. By his own account he "started thinking about unbundling about a year ago". A committee of three recommended it to the board in June 1993, and "it came as news to many, including some of the executive directors". Ten days before the announcement, senior executives were still "strenuously contesting" it. The paper called Clewlow "the driving force".The reason he gave was earnings. They had fallen from 544 cents a share in 1989 to 387 in 1993. The dividend, 173 cents, had hardly moved in four years, and the share had gone nowhere. "There was no point in taking the group even further and further like this," he said. The paper went further. It reported the view that Barlow Rand "was conceptually flawed", and said the mining calamities "did grievous damage to its prestige and credibility".The June announcement covered CG Smith and Reunert only. Rand Mines and its property company were added in August, a week after Gencor announced its own break-up. Investors gave the whole "widespread approval". A group that had taken ninety years to assemble was broken up on a year's thought and a fortnight's argument.The case for Clewlow is that the market paid him at once. The pieces and the parent together were worth 118 per cent more within nineteen months, and shareholders who kept the pieces own Tiger Brands, Spar, Astral, Oceana, Nampak and Reunert today. I do not accept it. He did what the books of 1993 said a chairman should do. Conglomerates were out of favour, the ANC wanted a commission into them, and Gencor announced its own break-up in the same weeks. He unlocked a discount, once. The shareholder who kept every piece went on to earn about what the market earned, and no more. What the house lost was permanent. Barlow Rand had gold, coal, food, packaging, cement and Caterpillar under one roof. That breadth is what let it hold an asset through a bad cycle and buy when others were selling. It is how Punch bought the Corner House. The focused company that remained had no such defence. Its share closed the 1997 financial year at R53.25 and the 1998 year at R22.00, and the company grew smaller with every later distribution until its own chief executive could buy it. Clewlow did not mend the group or build on it. By his own account he saw no point in taking it further. He handed it out and called it focus, and other men did the building.The gold is the charge. His own mineral resources division, the old Rand Mines management, ran Harmony and Durban Deep to be wound down. They called the policy "death with dignity". Gold was then about R1,180 an ounce.Barlow then got out, in three steps. In January 1993 it received 22.2 million Randgold & Exploration shares, 74 per cent of the gold house. It handed about 11.8 million of them to its own shareholders, six for every hundred Barlow Rand shares. That was 39 per cent of the house. It kept about 35 per cent.During 1993 it sold about 8 per cent more, at prices that were not reported. On 25 January 1994 the Financial Times reported that it was offering its remaining 27 per cent by tender. The paper said the holding was "worth nearly R80m ($23.5m) at current market prices". Clewlow had told the annual meeting the day before that the sale would be done within a month. A year after receiving three-quarters of the oldest mining house on the Rand, Barlow was selling the last of it.The tender puts a figure on the whole action. It works out at about R9.93 a share. At that price the 35 per cent Barlow sold for itself was worth about R104 million, and the 39 per cent it gave its shareholders about R117 million. The whole 74 per cent was worth about R220 million, and the whole gold house about R300 million. That was Harmony, Blyvooruitzicht, Durban Deep, East Rand Proprietary and the mineral rights of the Corner House. Punch had paid R39 million of paper for all of Rand Mines twenty-three years earlier.The price was low even for its day. In August 1994 Randgold's own board told shareholders that the company held cash of 348 cents a share and listed shares worth 997 cents a share. Its own share stood at 900 cents. The market valued the house at two-thirds of its cash and quoted mine shares, and gave nothing for the mineral rights. Barlow sold into that price without a struggle. I know of no worse sale in the history of the Rand.The buyers saw what the house could not. Mercury Asset Management, a London fund manager, already held about a quarter. In August 1994, with Fraser Alexander and Peter Flack's team, it took the board against the directors' opposition. The share was R8.50.A marginal mine at the bottom of a cycle is an option on the price. Harmony was "on the edge of closure" in 1995. It is worth R163 billion today, built by Bernard Swanepoel from mines everyone else had given up. Gold in rand is fifty-six times what it was. None of that growth is Barlow Rand's to claim. What is Barlow's is the exit. It gave away or sold three-quarters of the oldest mining house on the Rand inside about a year, in the twelfth year of a bear market, at prices that valued the whole of it at about R300 million.Clewlow was an accountant whose career had been in the industrial companies. When his miners told him the mines were dying, he believed them. Punch was no miner either. He had bought the same option for paper before the previous cycle turned. Each is judged on what he could see at the time. Punch could see a fixed price about to float. Clewlow could see twelve years of falling prices and mines his own engineers had written off. Punch was prepared to own something he did not understand because of what it might become. Clewlow wanted only what he could measure..Barlow received 74 per cent of the gold house in January 1993. A year later it was selling the last of it. At the price of that last sale the whole stake was worth about R220 million. Harmony alone is worth R163 billion today.Then there is the manner of the man, which anyone who did business with Barlow Rand in the 1990s remembers. Clewlow ran the group for twenty-two years, six as chief executive and sixteen as chairman. He unbundled a conglomerate and kept the conglomerate's court. Lunch at Barlow Park was served by waiters in white gloves, in the manner of an old London club.He sat on the boards of Old Mutual, Nedcor and Sasol while chairing Barloworld, and he chose every chief executive who served under him. The last was his son-in-law, made finance director in 2003 and chief executive in December 2006, five weeks before Clewlow left the chair.He did not leave on his own terms. In January 2007 the Public Investment Corporation, with 17 per cent, attacked the board in public over its slowness on transformation. Its chief executive, Brian Molefe, called the appointment of a white deputy chairman "patronising and racist". Clewlow resigned the chair at the annual meeting.The market gave him the credit for 1993. I give him none, and I add a charge. He broke up a house because its managers had run it as their own estate. He then ran what was left as his own for fourteen more years, picked his successors from his own table, and left only when an outside shareholder made him. That is what I meant in 1997 by the dead hand of Barlows. THE GOLD, AFTERVI. What other men made of the goldThe later history of Randgold & Exploration shows what the assets were worth in other hands. Three roads ran out of it.The first is Harmony. In 1994 Randgold's new owners put Bernard Swanepoel in as managing director. From 1997 Randgold sold its holding down and Harmony became independent. Swanepoel bought mines that others were selling: Evander in 1998, Randfontein in 2000, Elandsrand and Deelkraal in 2001, the Free State mines in 2002, ARMgold in 2003 and Avgold in 2004. His successors added Moab Khotsong and Mponeng. Harmony mined 1.2 million ounces in 1999 and 2.9 million in 2003. On 13 November 2026 it was worth R163 billion.The second is Randgold Resources. In August 1995 Randgold & Exploration formed a Jersey company to look for gold in West Africa. It put Mark Bristow in charge. He had joined Rand Mines in 1981 and run its exploration. The company found Morila in December 1996 and listed in London in July 1997. Morila poured gold from 2000, Loulo from 2005, Tongon from 2010 and Kibali from 2013.On 1 January 2019 it merged into Barrick at 6.128 Barrick shares for each of its own, and Bristow became Barrick's chief executive. At the end of 2002 Randgold & Exploration still owned about 48 per cent of it, 12,360,000 shares, counted before the two-for-one split of 2004.The third is the Kebbles. Brett Kebble took control of Randgold & Exploration through JCI from 1997. Between April 2002 and August 2005 the company sold 10.7 million Randgold Resources shares for a net R1.1 billion. Most were sold without the board's approval: 9.7 million shares for R951.5 million, of which "only R292.8 million was credited" to the company. A further 5.5 million shares were lent to JCI and passed to a foreign bank. Four million pledged to Société Générale were sold in January 2006 for R412 million.The company's circular of 9 June 2006 names as responsible R B Kebble, R A R Kebble, C H D Cornwall, John Stratton, G W Poole and Hennie Buitendag. Nobody was tried on the share dealings. The exchange suspended the shares on 1 August 2005, and Kebble was shot dead in Johannesburg on 27 September 2005. JCI settled in May 2010 for about R784 million. What is left of Randgold & Exploration is a shell with five employees and R51 million of net assets.What the gold might have been worth to Barlow Rand can be stated only as a scenario. Suppose Randgold & Exploration had kept the Randgold Resources shares it held at the end of 2002. They would be 151.5 million Barrick shares today, worth about R96 billion. Randgold & Exploration has 71.6 million shares outstanding, so each would carry about R1,346. On that count the 22.2 million shares Barlow Rand received in January 1993 would be worth about R30 billion. About R15.8 billion of that belongs to the shares it handed its own holders, R81 for each Barlow Rand share. About R14.1 billion belongs to the 35 per cent it sold.The holders who kept those six shares did far worse in fact, because of the Kebbles. In October 2010 Randgold & Exploration announced a payout of 90 cents and a parcel of Gold Fields shares, 432 cents a share in all. What remains is the shell described above.Set that beside the rest of the house. Barlow Rand was worth R7.5 billion in October 1993, on about 196 million shares. Everything a holder of that date now holds or has been paid, before dividends, comes to R59.7 billion, from the ledger in Appendix A. The consortium's price values Barloworld at R23.3 billion. With the gold scenario added, the R59.7 billion becomes about R90 billion.The scenario flatters Barlows. Randgold Resources was founded by Flack and Bristow in 1995, after Barlow had sold, with money raised from other shareholders. Barlow's own managers were closing the mines. The figure measures the size of what was let go. It does not show what Barlow's managers would have made of it. On their record they would have closed the mines. Other men took the same assets and built Harmony and Randgold Resources out of them, and that is the indictment..Barlow Rand on about 196 million shares: its market value in October 1993, the price paid for Barloworld, everything a holder of 1993 holds or was paid before dividends, and the same with the gold scenario added. The hatched block is imputed and is not counted as a loss. From the ledger in Appendix A and the sources in the references; author's arithmetic..THE DEFENCEVII. The shareholders were paid, by the companies that leftThe managers' defence is that the shareholders were paid. They were. Every dividend, every distributed share and every cash offer is counted in the two ledgers in the appendices, one for a share bought in 1990 and one for a share bought on my own recommendation in 1997. Both give the same answer. The holder did about as well as the market, and he owed it to the companies that left. The share of the company the managers kept returned 3.7 per cent a year from 1990 and 3.3 per cent from 1997. Counted in full, the defence proves the charge.On 7 July 1997 Smith Borkum Hare published a report on Barlow Limited under my name and Jacob Greenblatt's. Its cover is the plate at the end. Barlows was then worth R9.9 billion at R47.95 a share, four years after the unbundling. It was a Caterpillar dealership, a materials-handling business, a paint company, a cement company and Bibby in Britain. It also owned a quarter of Persetel, the computer-services company the market wanted that year, worth R1.8 billion. It was the most exciting asset in the group, and the one Barlows' management could not touch. Without Persetel the share traded on 12.6 times earnings. The report found the whole worth R59 to R61 a share and set a price objective of R63.78.The first question is whether the call was right on its own horizon. It was not. The emerging-market crisis of 1998 took Barlows down with the market. The share closed the 1997 financial year at R53.25 and the 1998 year at R22.00. It did not pass R63.78 until 2004.Persetel's value did come through, but to the company. Persetel merged with Q Data in August 1997 and became Comparex. Barlows sold 26 million Comparex shares in November 1998 for R1,378 million, a profit of R1,043 million. It sold the rest in 2000, with its Dimension Data shares, for R936 million, a profit of R698 million. None of it was paid out as such. The first proceeds went to debt, which fell by R641 million. The second bought 26.3 per cent of Avis for R395 million and 17 million of the company's own shares for R768 million, at an average of R45.25. The thesis was right about the asset and wrong about the share. The company realised the value and kept it.The second question is what a holder who kept the share received over the next twenty-nine years. The ledger is in Appendix B. A share bought at R47.95 received R360.62 if the PPC shares were sold on the day they arrived, and R314.92 if they were held with their dividends and rights.Those receipts can be turned into a yearly return, with each one taken at its payment date. The share price alone, from R47.95 in July 1997 to R120 in cash in January 2026, gives 3.3 per cent a year. With the PPC shares sold on arrival the holding earned 14.8 per cent a year. With the PPC shares held it earned 10.5 per cent. The gap between the two is PPC's decade after 2015.The yardsticks over the same dates are these. The all-share index rose from 7,293 to 112,388, which is 9.8 per cent a year before dividends. The index yielded between 2.4 and 3.9 per cent in the years 2001 to 2009, so its total return was roughly 13 per cent a year. That figure is an estimate. Gold in rand returned 13.9 per cent a year.One caution applies. The ledger's return does not assume that the holder reinvested his dividends. An index total return assumes that every dividend went back into the index.As a call with a target and a horizon, the 1997 Buy failed. The share halved within fifteen months and took seven years to reach the objective. I had recommended it for the value of its parts, Persetel above all, and in spite of a management I had criticised on the cover. The value was there, and it stayed with the company. As a holding over twenty-nine years the share did better: 14.8 per cent a year with the PPC shares sold when they arrived and 10.5 with them held, against roughly 13 for the index. Set either figure beside the 3.3 per cent the share price earned on its own. The holder was paid in dividends and in pieces handed out. The share he was left holding went from R47.95 to R120 in twenty-nine years.Most of what the holder received came from pieces the company no longer has. The PPC shares were R95 of the R361, on one day in July 2007..The Buy of 1997 failed on its own terms: the share halved and took seven years to reach the target. The holder who stayed earned 14.8 per cent a year with every receipt counted. On the share price alone he earned 3.3. The rest came from dividends and from what the company handed out, R95 of it in PPC shares on one day in July 2007.The second ledger starts earlier. The 1997 ledger begins four years after the unbundling, so it says nothing about Clewlow's decision of 1993. To score that decision the holder must buy before it, while the mining house was still inside.The purchase is one Barlow Rand share at R33.25, the close of 27 September 1990. The holder does nothing afterwards except accept what arrives. He keeps the four companies of 1993 and 1994 and everything that came out of them. He keeps the PPC, Freeworld and Zeda shares. He takes every dividend at its face value and every cash offer at its price. He does not take up rights offers, and the PPC rights of 2016 are counted as sold, as they are for the 1997 share. Nothing is adjusted for inflation.The result is in the figure and in Appendix A, on the same two treatments as the 1997 share. With the PPC shares sold on arrival, R33.25 had become R660.29 by November 2026. That is twenty times the price paid and 16.0 per cent a year. With the PPC shares held it had become R614.59, of which R477.74 was cash and R136.85 was shares still held. That is eighteen times the price paid and 14.2 per cent a year.The 1997 share received R360.62 and R314.92 on the same treatments, 14.8 and 10.5 per cent a year. The 1990 share did better on both because it also received the four companies of 1993 and 1994. Its cash receipts alone had passed the purchase price by 2001.The Barlow share itself, from R33.25 in 1990 to R120 in cash in 2026, returned 3.7 per cent a year. The all-share index returned 10.8 per cent a year before dividends and roughly 14 per cent with them. The patient holder did about as well as the market with the PPC shares held, and somewhat better with them sold on arrival. Without the pieces he would have done far worse.Where the money came from bears on Clewlow. The line the holder kept is Barloworld, with the PPC, Freeworld and Zeda shares it later distributed. With the PPC shares held, that line produced R292.44 in cash and still holds R31.64 of shares, R324.08 in all. Of that, R120 was paid on the day the company was taken private.The four companies distributed in 1993 and 1994, with the nine that came out of CG Smith, produced R185.30 in cash and still hold R105.21 of shares, R290.51 in all. In February 1994 those four lines were worth R32.75. That is within 50 cents of what the holder had paid for the whole of Barlow Rand in 1990. They have since paid back nine times that, mostly in dividends and cash offers.Reunert is the plainest case. The market priced the holding at R9.93 in February 1994. It has paid R56.70 and is worth R31.35 today. Tiger Brands, reached through CG Smith in 2000, has paid R47.47 and is worth R50.33. On the way it handed out Astral, Spar, Adcock Ingram and Oceana, which have paid R46.89 more and are worth R22.14.A holder who sold the four lines in February 1994 had all but 50 cents of his outlay back in the fourth year and held the Barlow share for nothing. On that footing his return works out at 16.9 per cent a year, a higher rate than the holder who kept everything, only because his capital came back so early. That is what the 1993 distribution did for the shareholder who received it.It also measures the company that remained. Over the next thirty-two years the Barlow line paid R292.44 in cash, of which R120 arrived on the last day, and the share went from R33.25 to R120. Clewlow's unbundling returned the shareholders' capital in full. The boards that followed were working with money the shareholders had already been repaid. They had thirty-two years and a free hand, and the share price says what they did with them: 3.7 per cent a year..The four companies Clewlow gave away were worth the whole 1990 purchase price by 1994 and have paid nine times that since. The Barlow share that was kept went from R33.25 to R120 between 1990 and 2026, 3.7 per cent a year. The shareholders were paid by the companies that left. The men who stayed did not pay them. BUILDER, CARETAKER, UNDERTAKERVIII. What the boards did with the company they kept, 1999 to 2025An unbundling hands assets to shareholders. It says nothing about the managers. The test of the managers is what they did with the company they kept. Three chief executives ran Barloworld between the unbundling and the buyout. Tony Phillips, from 1999 to December 2006, built. Clive Thomson, from December 2006 to February 2017, kept what he was given. Dominic Sewela, from February 2017, sold most of it and then bought the rest. Clewlow was chairman over the first two.Phillips comes first, because the others are measured against him. He was an engineer who joined Barlows in 1968 and turned round Finanzauto, the Spanish Caterpillar dealer, between 1992 and 1995. He became chief executive in 1999 and renamed the company Barloworld in October 2000.He ran it on one idea, which he called value-based management. Every business had to earn a cash return above an 8 per cent real hurdle. In 2002 he set a public target to double the value of the company in four years. The hurdle was missed in his first year and beaten in every year after. The target was beaten.Headline earnings a share went from 320 cents in 1999 to 1,171 in 2006. Revenue went from R20.8 billion to R42.7 billion. The share went from R29.40 to R129.50, and R25 a share was paid in dividends on the way. He sold the Comparex and Dimension Data shares at the top of the technology market for R2.3 billion, and bought Barloworld's own shares at R45 with part of it. He bought the rest of Avis in 2004. His mistakes are in his own reports: Avis written down the year after he bought into it, Steel Tube impaired, and a bid for Wattyl in Australia refused by the regulator. "We are not portfolio traders," he wrote in his last report, "but rather try to build a core of businesses."The review that led to the PPC unbundling was commissioned while he was chief executive. The unbundling was announced on 20 December 2006, in the same statement as his retirement. No document shows whether he was for it or against it. He took a company the market had priced as a dull industrial holding and nearly quadrupled its earnings in eight years. The boards that followed lived on what he built, and gave away the largest piece of it within seven months of his leaving.Thomson's appointment comes before his record, because the company itself disclosed it. Barloworld's 2003 annual report lists, among the board's connections, "Mr WAM Clewlow who is father-in-law to the finance director, Mr CB Thomson". Thomson had joined in 1997 from a Deloitte partnership, as finance director of the coatings division. Clewlow, as chairman, made him group finance director in 2003 at thirty-seven and chief executive in December 2006 at forty. Clewlow retired from the chair five weeks later. The disclosure was lawful and it was made. The ten years that followed are the test of the choice.Thomson's first year was the unbundling of PPC. R19.3 billion was handed to shareholders at the top of the cement cycle, with a R5 special dividend, and Freeworld followed. After that the company stood still. Headline earnings a share from continuing operations were 812 cents in 2007 and 838 cents in 2016. Return on equity fell from 18.9 per cent to 9.2. His one acquisition of consequence was the other half of the Russian Caterpillar dealer, bought in 2010 for US$52 million. It was a good business until 2022 and is now the company's largest problem.He described his strategy to the Financial Mail in 2016 as "seed, grow and harvest". He was not a bad steward. The debt came down, the dividend was paid every year and the Caterpillar relationships were kept. But the job needed a builder. He was chosen by his father-in-law, and after the first year's harvest he kept the company where he found it for a decade. When he left in 2017 for the boards of Woolworths and Vodacom, nobody in the press judged him at all. I will. He spent ten years of a great company's life and had nothing to show for them.Sewela is judged on each decision, and on one above the others..What the company paid for its own shares, R85.61 in the 2020 financial year and R95.38 in 2022, from the directors' reports, and what the chief executive's consortium paid for the company. Sources in the references..The accounts after Phillips show a group run for returns on a shrinking base, and the returns were ordinary. Return on equity was 18.9 per cent in 2007, the last year with cement inside. It never came near that again. It fell to 3 per cent in 2010, recovered to about 12 per cent by 2013 and was 10.5 per cent in 2017.The company then switched to return on invested capital, with a target of 13 per cent. It missed the target in every year to 2021. It reported 16.9, 17.7 and 15.7 per cent for 2022 to 2024, on a base from which Zeda, the dealerships and logistics had just been removed.Headline earnings a share were 1,171 cents in 2006, with cement. They were 1,022 cents in 2024 and 810 in 2025, on fewer shares. Bidvest, the comparison the market makes, earned 14 per cent on invested capital in 2025. It has more than three times Barloworld's revenue and was built by acquisition through the same years..What the company earned on its capital, 2007 to 2025: return on equity to 2017, return on invested capital from 2017 against the company's own 13 per cent target, with Bidvest's 2025 figure for comparison. Sources in the references..Ingrain: operating profit since the purchase, and the return on invested capital the company reported against its own 14 per cent hurdle. Sources in the references..Ingrain shows what kind of buyer Sewela was. It is best read beside Punch's purchase of 1971, because the two men did the same thing in opposite ways. Punch bought a mining house for paper at the bottom of a forty-year price freeze, from a seller who kept a quarter of his company and stayed.Sewela bought a starch and glucose mill for R5.35 billion in borrowed cash, from a seller who had to sell. Tongaat Hulett was four months out of an accounting scandal. It had R13 billion of debt and had agreed with its banks to cut it by R8.1 billion inside a year. Its shares had fallen from R169 to R3.24. The price was 6.9 times the mill's trailing earnings before interest, tax and depreciation. Barloworld called the business "a highly cash generative, relatively asset light, defensive investment".Nine weeks later the country was locked down. Barloworld gave notice that the pandemic was a material adverse change. It said the mill's profit would fall at least 17.5 per cent, and asked to be let out. Tongaat's chief executive answered: "if you shake my hand, we've done a deal". Rothschild, as the independent expert, found in September that no adverse change had occurred. Barloworld paid in full on 31 October 2020.A month later Sewela told Engineering News "we are very clear that we don't want to be a conglomerate akin to the old Barloworld". An analyst told The Citizen that "it's a bit of a hotch-potch when you start putting starch with capital equipment".The accounts since are in the figure above. Operating profit was R709 million in 2022, R593 million in 2023, R498 million in 2024 and R388 million in 2025. The return on invested capital was 7.7 per cent in 2024, against the group's own hurdle of 14 per cent. There was a retrenchment process in 2024, and R1.64 billion of goodwill has not been impaired. In November 2024 Sewela said that "Ingrain performs better than our thesis at acquisition". The thesis is not published, so the claim cannot be tested. The hurdle can be, and the business has not met it in any year.Sewela bought a food business a quarter of a century after Clewlow had handed the group's food businesses to shareholders. He said he was not rebuilding the conglomerate. He tried to escape his own contract when the price moved against him, and was held to it. He has owned since then an asset earning half his own hurdle.Punch's gamble was cheap, paid in paper, and right about the one thing that mattered. This purchase was made with the shareholders' borrowing capacity. Five years later the same shareholders were bought out at a price that valued the whole group at 4.7 times earnings before interest, tax and depreciation. That is less than the multiple he had paid for the mill. The two multiples are five years and a pandemic apart. The fact stands all the same: he paid a higher multiple for a starch mill, on the shareholders' credit, than he later paid the shareholders for their whole company.My conclusion on the motive is my own. A buyer who believed in the business would not have asked to be let out of it on a 17.5 per cent profit forecast. The one thing to be said for the mill is that it still makes money.Most of the capital released by the disposals was returned to shareholders, and what was reinvested earned less than the hurdle. Returning capital is not a fault in itself. It is what a management does when it has nothing it wants to build, and this one had nothing.By its own count the company returned R15.5 billion between 2017 and 2023. I reconcile that as about R9.7 billion of ordinary and special dividends, R2.6 billion of buy-backs at R85.61 and R95.38 a share, and the Zeda shares at R3.2 billion.The two acquisitions of 2020 were made in the same half-year. Wagner Asia, the Caterpillar dealer in Mongolia, was bought for R3,038 million from cash on hand. Its own return is not disclosed, so it cannot be scored as Ingrain is. Russia was a good business for a decade. The company's own adviser would not value it as a going concern, and it holds R2.6 billion of the group's cash.What was left is a company that depends on one principal. By 2024 the Caterpillar dealerships in southern Africa, Russia and Mongolia were 83 per cent of revenue, and the starch mill was the rest. Caterpillar's annual report describes its dealer agreements, in general, as "terminable at will by either party primarily upon 90 days written notice". Barloworld does not publish the terms of its own agreements. The circular of January 2025 says only that "Caterpillar has expressed its support for the implementation of the Proposed Transaction".So Caterpillar's consent was a condition of any sale. The buyer who obtained it was a consortium whose other member was Caterpillar's dealer in Saudi Arabia.Three chief executives in twenty-six years, and one of them built. Phillips took earnings from 320 cents a share to 1,171 in eight years. Thomson left them where he found them once the cement had gone. Sewela returned the capital the disposals released and bought a starch mill with debt. The mill has not met the hurdle in any year, and the business that is left depends on one franchise for four-fifths of its revenue. PART THREE · TAKING IT PRIVATEIX. The chief executive buys the company, and the board lets himThe last chief executive bought the company he was paid to run, from the shareholders who paid him. The five directors who stood between him and those shareholders left him in his job, agreed not to look for another buyer, and called his price fair. The law was satisfied. The owners were not, and they said so by 63 per cent.The take-private ran for twenty-three months, from an unsolicited approach to a delisting.The approach came on 26 February 2024. Three days earlier Gulf Falcon Holding, a Zahid company, and Dominic Sewela personally had signed a binding term sheet. It settled "the debt and equity commitments of each Consortium member and applicable security arrangements".On 28 February the board formed an independent board of five: Dr Nolulamo Gwagwa in the chair, Neo Mokhesi, Peter Schmid, Nicola Chiaranda and Vuyisa Nkonyeni. RMB and DLA Piper advised it. The first cautionary announcement was issued on 15 April 2024 and renewed five times. Due diligence ran for six weeks from late May. The binding offer arrived on 10 December, and the implementation agreement was signed the next day.The firm intention announcement of 11 December 2024 offered R120 a share in cash. Shareholders would also keep the R3.10 final dividend for 2024, already declared. The company had 189.6 million shares in issue. Of these, 3.2 million were treasury shares and 43.5 million belonged to the consortium and its associates, most of them Zahid's 35.8 million. That left 142,971,907 shares to be bought. Standard Bank guaranteed R120 for each of them, R17.16 billion.The company is now owned by a vehicle since renamed Main Street 1852. It is held 51 per cent by Entsha and 49 per cent by Gulf Falcon Holding, and the circular says Entsha "will hold a majority of the voting and economic rights". Entsha is wholly owned by DKMS Group, which is wholly owned by the Katlego Le Masego Trust. The trust is "a discretionary trust" whose disclosed beneficiaries are Dominic Sewela, Katlego Sewela and Masego Sewela. No trustee is named in any document.The circular says the price was "fully funded from funds to be made available to the Consortium from SBSA". It does not disclose the split between debt and equity, or what each member put in. So a trust for Sewela and his family holds the majority of the votes and the economic rights in the company that owns Barloworld, on financing terms that have not been published. What share of the equity it paid for is not disclosed.R120 was 66 per cent above the last close before the first cautionary and 83 per cent above the thirty-day average. It stood above the top of the independent expert's range. Rothschild put the share at R105.53 to R119.43, with R112.48 the most likely value, for a fee of R12 million. The independent board relied on those facts, and they are correct. The circular states no earnings or cash-flow multiple at all. A premium to a share price that stood below book value, and a valuer's range, are not a market.The consortium said on 13 February 2025 that R120 "is the full and final offer price and will not be increased". A holder who accepted received R124.30 in cash in all: the R120, the R1.20 the Panel added and the R3.10 dividend.The multiples can be worked out from the accounts. Headline earnings a share for the year to September 2024 were 1,022 cents, so R120 is 11.7 times earnings. It is 14.8 times the 810 cents reported for 2025. At R120 the equity is worth R22.4 billion. Adding net debt of R1.4 billion gives an enterprise value of about R23.8 billion, which is 4.65 times the year's EBITDA of R5,110 million.On the day the circular was posted, seven listed industrial peers traded on between 6.6 and 13.4 times trailing earnings, an average of 9.4. Invicta was the lowest and Bidvest the highest. On earnings, R120 was above the peer average.R120 was below the company's own history and above its book value. The share had been R185.88 early in 2018, though that was before Zeda and the special dividends came out of it. Net asset value was R87.98 a share at September 2024, so R120 was 36 per cent above book. It was 40 per cent above the R85.61 the company had paid for its own shares in the 2020 financial year, and 26 per cent above the R95.38 of 2022.Russia complicates every multiple. Its operating profit fell from R528 million in 2024 to R94 million in 2025. Its R2.6 billion of cash was restricted and then, after an internal restructuring, was not. Rothschild declined to value it as a going concern. A buyer who could see further into that business than the market could was buying something the market was not pricing. That buyer was the chief executive..R120 against its yardsticks: the 2018 high, the pre-cautionary average, the expert's range, the offer, Silchester's stated floor, book value and the company's own 2020 buy-back price. Sources in the references..The conflict comes first, because everything the independent board did was a response to it. Sewela was chief executive of a listed company. He held 1,054,303 of its shares and a service contract with redundancy terms on a change of control. He joined a consortium to buy the company from the shareholders who employed him, through a trust for his own family that held 51 per cent of the bidding vehicle. The term sheet with the Saudi dealer was signed three days before the board was told.He then stayed in his job. He presented the results of November 2024, May 2025 and November 2025 while the offer was open. He ran the businesses whose forecasts the independent expert's valuation rested on. On 13 June 2025, with the standby offer open, he and his family trust pledged 1,200,000 shares worth R129.5 million as security for a one-year loan. Its purpose was not disclosed. Zahid's head of investments explained in March 2025 why he stayed: "we wanted the CEO to be able to continue to take care of operations".The critics were plain. Three analysts told Moneyweb it was "a massive conflict of interests". Business Day's acting editor called it "a masterclass in corporate conflict of interest". The Financial Mail argued that he should be put on leave until the buyout was done. Silchester, with 17.7 per cent, said the independent board had "failed in its fiduciary duty" by letting him keep his authority. The shareholders agreed in the only way open to them. Sixty-three per cent voted against the scheme and 61 per cent against the independent board's own fee.The board's answer was that the law did not require more. The Takeover Regulations require a conflicted director to disclose his interest and stay off the independent board. They do not require him to stand down. The board said on 26 February 2025 that it was "not market practice, nor a regulatory requirement to place conflicted members of management on long-term gardening leave". Both statements are true. Neither answers the point.The regulations set a floor. When the chief executive is the buyer, the floor is not enough. The value of the company is the value of the businesses he runs and the forecasts he supervises. Every other possible buyer knows that the man who holds Caterpillar's confidence is on the other side.The board had two remedies. It could have put him on paid leave, as the Financial Mail proposed. It could have run a market check before giving the consortium exclusivity. It did neither. A year later the remuneration committee was chaired by a member of the consortium. It signed a report that prices his unvested awards at his own offer price, at deemed performance of up to 215 per cent.The circular lists the board's safeguards. There was an independent board of five with its own advisers, a conduct protocol for the chief executive and a steering committee of unconflicted executives. Rothschild confirmed that the management forecasts for 2025 to 2028 were "free from the influence of Mr. Sewela", and gave its opinion that the price was fair and reasonable.The circular allows three tests of that record.The first is the market check. The approach is described as unsolicited. In the implementation agreement the independent board agreed to exclusivity and non-solicitation. It would end any existing discussions, tell the consortium of any approach and give it a right to match. A competing proposal counted as superior only at 5 per cent more. The 106 pages describe no approach to any other buyer. The board tested the price against a valuation. It did not test it against a market.The second is the forecast. The expert's range of R105.53 to R119.43 rests on management's forecasts, with Russia valued only on the cash that might be got out of it. The expert assumed "that all trading, operational and supplier licences will continue". The Caterpillar licence is the asset, and Caterpillar's general terms are ninety days' notice. The one buyer whose standing with Caterpillar was beyond doubt was the one bidding. That narrows what a market check could have found, and the board is entitled to that point. It does not explain why none was run.The third is the vote. The scheme was rejected by 63 per cent of the votes cast, with 85 per cent of the eligible shares voting. The largest shareholder voted no on governance grounds. Eight weeks later it accepted the same price, in return for an empowerment commitment to be performed after the other shareholders had been paid out. The consortium then lowered the 90 per cent acceptance condition to 51, as the circular allowed.Every step was lawful. Silchester, with 17.7 per cent, had said in public that it would not sell below R130. It had also said that the company, "with new management, a reasonable board of directors and proper capital allocation, is well placed to succeed". The documents do not show that the board tested whether anyone else would have paid more. When the buyer is the chief executive and the board will not ask the market what the company is worth, the board has stopped working for the owners. That is my judgment, and the vote shows the owners shared it.The board tested R120 against a valuation built on forecasts for the businesses the buyer was running. It agreed not to look for another buyer, and it left him in his job. The shareholder with 17.7 per cent had named R130. Sixty-three per cent of the votes said no. The board did what the rules required and nothing more. BARLOW PARKX. Barlow Park: what the head-office land became, and what the company got for itBarlow Park was ten hectares at 180 Katherine Street, Sandton, beside the M1 and across the highway from Alexandra. The group had been run from it since the Barlow Rand years. Until 2019 it also housed the Corner House archive, the records of Eckstein, Wernher Beit, Central Mining and Rand Mines back to 1887. Stephen Cranston described the buildings in Business Day in May 2025 as a grim eastern European complex with ugly tower blocks. The architecture is not the issue. The land is, and what the company got for it.On 7 December 2017 Barloworld, Atterbury and African Rainbow Capital announced that Barlow Park would be redeveloped. It would become a 130,000 square metre precinct of offices, flats, shops and a hotel, with an eventual value "well over R3 billion". Each party would hold a third. Sewela called the move "a symbolic major shift in our ethos and perspective of managing for value".In November 2018 the corporate office moved to rented floors at 61 Katherine Street, and the equipment and logistics businesses moved out. The archive went to the basement of the Wits Education Library. The property was classified as held for sale at R93 million, its carrying value, and management was "confident that this sale will take place in 2019".The sale did not take place. The 2019 results said "the property is yet to be sold to the consortium". The 2020 results said the plan was "being reassessed in line with current market conditions", and the property went back into property, plant and equipment. In 2021 the board approved R434 million for a revised plan.By June 2022 the plan was a different one. There would be no offices. There would be 4,100 rental flats in eleven blocks over a Checkers and a Clicks. Atterbury and Divercity were the development managers, and the Moolman Group and Twin City were co-investors. Barloworld, in the words of its 2022 results, had "contributed the land and 50% of the equity for the project".African Rainbow Capital was no longer in it. Its results for the year to June 2022 record in one line that "Barlopark was sold during the year for a consideration of R25 million". Neither company announced the exit. The first 300 flats took tenants in January 2024, and the second phase of 846 flats was finished in June 2025. Business Day put the cost of the first two phases at about R1.5 billion.In Barloworld's accounts the land was carried at R93 million until 2020, and at R57 million in 2022 and 2023. The notes do not explain the step down. The transfer into Barlow Park Residential (Pty) Ltd, a 50 per cent joint venture, was registered on 30 May 2024. The company's note says the property was contributed "as part of the initial contribution, therefore this transaction has no cash impact". It booked a profit of R18 million.Carrying value plus the gain is about R75 million. That is the implied entry price for the land. The company has not disclosed the number. The true figure may be higher. Under the equity method a company may book only the part of such a gain that belongs to the other investors. If the R18 million was half of the gain, the implied value is about R93 million.ARC's exit points the same way. R25 million for a third values the 2017 vehicle's equity at R75 million. But that is equity in a vehicle with loans and obligations, and so is not the gross value of the land.The accounts show this much of what each side received. Barloworld put in the land, at an implied R75 million, and half the equity. It holds half of a company that had R1.24 billion of assets and R1.25 billion of long-term debt at 30 September 2025. That company had negative net assets of R60 million and owed Barloworld R211 million.The land did not vanish. It became a half share and a loan. The issue is whether those were fair payment for ten hectares and the cash put in since. Negative equity in a half-built development does not settle it.The developers hold the other half. No document states their individual shares or what they put in. No independent valuation of the land has been disclosed, and no tender or competing proposal. The price for the two-thirds that was to be sold in 2018 and 2019 was never announced, because that sale was never completed. The transaction completed in 2024 was a contribution at book value plus R18 million.One comparison is available, and it concerns disclosure, not value. The company sold sixty-eight properties to Khula Sizwe in 2019. An independent valuer put them at R2.755 billion. The price, the discount and the valuer were published in a circular and voted on. Barlow Park, the one property with the company's name on it, had none of that.The next issue is whether anyone on the company's side of the table had an interest on the other side. The other half of Barlow Park Residential is held by four developers, in proportions the company has never published. Atterbury is a Pretoria developer in which RMH Property holds about 30 per cent. Divercity was formed in 2018 by Atterbury and Ithemba, with RMH and Nedbank as cornerstone investors, and the PIC has been an investor in it since January 2025. The others are the Moolman Group and Twin City. Absa is the lender. The venture's directors have never been published.Barloworld's financial statements for 2022 to 2025 disclose the venture under related parties. They use the standard words that its transactions "occurred under terms that are no less favourable than those entered into with third parties". They disclose no interest of any director or executive in the venture or in any of the developers. No published document links any of the developers to Dominic Sewela, his family, his trust, the buying consortium or any Barloworld director.What stands is this. The company put ten hectares of Sandton into a venture half-owned by private developers, at about R75 million. No valuation, tender or competing offer was ever published. The company has never said who owns the other half or what they paid for it.Four questions remain unanswered. What did the independent board and its adviser take Barloworld's half of the venture to be worth when they found R120 a share fair in January 2025? Why was the carrying value cut from R93 million to R57 million between 2020 and 2022? On what basis was the site contributed at about R75 million without a published valuation, when the company's other properties had been valued and voted on in public? Who holds the other half, in what proportions, and for what contribution? The circular, the notes and the announcements are silent on all four. Nobody has put them to the company at an annual meeting or in print. Ten hectares of Sandton with the company's name on the gate deserved better than silence.Ten hectares of Sandton went into a half-owned venture at an entry price the accounts imply was about R75 million and may have been higher. The sixty-eight properties the company sold in the same years were valued and voted on in public. For this one no valuation, tender or partner contribution has ever been published. THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE'S PAYXI. What the buyer was paid, and who signed it offThe buyer's unvested share awards are to be settled at his own offer price, at deemed performance of up to 215 per cent, and the report that says so was signed by his partner in the bid. The company has published no total. By my arithmetic it is about R138 million before the adjustment for time.The press told a different story, and it was the wrong one. It reported that in the year of the sale five executives were paid R43.5 million, and Sewela R21.8 million of it, in cash, at the offer price. The remuneration report for the year to 30 September 2025 does not support that reading.Sewela's single-figure pay for 2025 was R14.3 million. It was made up of salary of R11.0 million, retirement and medical benefits of R1.6 million, other benefits of R1.4 million and R0.3 million of dividends on unvested shares. He received no bonus and no long-term award. None of the financial targets for the bonus was met.The R21.8 million is a different line of the same report, headed "total cash value on settlement during 2025". It has three parts, and all three vested on their own terms before the offer went unconditional. The first is a gain of R5.2 million on share appreciation rights granted in February 2019. The second is R16.3 million of shares from awards made in December 2021, which vested on 6 December 2024 at R92.65. The third is R0.3 million of dividends.The shares were delivered as shares. The exchange filing of 17 December 2024 shows the same 176,142 shares at R92.65. The five-executive total of R43.5 million is the same line added up. These were the ordinary outcome of awards made three and six years earlier. The offer price did not touch them..The chief executive's single-figure pay against the company's headline earnings a share, 2017 to 2025. Sources in the references..The offer price does reach the awards still unvested at the year-end. Here the report gives percentages and a price but no total. Sewela held four unvested awards at 30 September 2025, made in 2022, 2023 and 2024. Together they were 861,071 shares.The report's footnote says that "due to the change of control event" the awards will vest early, adjusted for performance and time, "based on a share price of R120 per share". It sets deemed performance at 30 per cent for the forfeitable shares of 2022, and at 68, 215 and 112.5 per cent for the conditional shares of 2022, 2023 and 2024.At face value, 861,071 shares at R120 is R103.3 million. At the deemed percentages, before the adjustment for time, the shares become about 1,149,600 and the value about R138 million. Both figures are my arithmetic from the report's numbers. The company has published the method, the price and the percentages, but no total.The percentages were not fixed after the event. They appear in the firm intention announcement of 11 December 2024. The largest, 215 per cent for the 2023 award, was set by the remuneration committee under Peter Schmid in the weeks the offer was being prepared. The company's short-term bonus paid nothing in the following year. The company has not said who measured what, or with what discretion.The remuneration report for 2025 was signed on 19 January 2026 by Haytham Zahid, the new chairman of the remuneration committee and a member of the buying consortium. The buyer's partner signed off the buyer's pay.Two other facts from the reports bear on the bid. Sewela held 1,054,303 Barloworld shares at 30 September 2024, 696 per cent of his guaranteed pay against a required minimum of 200 per cent. On 13 June 2025 he and the Katlego Le Masego Trust pledged 1,200,000 shares, worth R129.5 million that day, as security under a one-year funding arrangement. His service contract provides nine months' notice and, within six months of a change of control, redundancy terms.Shareholders approved the remuneration policy and its implementation by 78.2 and 78.5 per cent at the annual meeting of 21 February 2025. That was five days before the meeting that voted down the scheme.The R21.8 million of the headlines was the ordinary outcome of awards made in 2019 and 2021, all vested before the offer went unconditional. The matter is the 861,071 shares still unvested. They are priced at the buyer's own R120, at deemed performance of up to 215 per cent, in a report signed by his partner in the bid. The company has not published what they will cost. THE VERDICTXII. What was built, and what was done to itBarlow Rand was the greatest industrial house South Africa has built. Inside it sat Rand Mines, the oldest mining house on the Rand. In 1989 the group employed about 240,000 people and stood seventy-ninth on the Fortune 500. It made cement, paint, sugar, food, packaging, electronics and steel. It mined gold and coal, and it held the Caterpillar franchise.Today the name belongs to a Caterpillar dealer with a starch mill. It is owned by its chief executive's family trust and a Saudi dealer, and it is no longer listed. Every step on the way was lawful. The house was taken apart one piece at a time by the men who were paid to run it, and each of them could explain why his piece had to go.That is my charge against them. Punch Barlow spent fifty years building, and bought the Corner House when nobody else wanted it. Rosholt bought more. After them only Tony Phillips built anything. The rest managed, tidied, sold and returned capital. They were careful men and passive ones. I can find no sign in the record that any of them wanted to own a thing for what it might become.Clewlow is the hardest to forgive. He broke up the group in 1993 because the books said so, and the market applauded. It is the story Anglo American told about itself: unlock the value, focus the company. The value was unlocked once, and the house lost the breadth that had let it hold through bad cycles and buy in them. Then the gold. He held three-quarters of the oldest gold house in the country and was out of it within about a year, at the bottom of the market. The price valued Harmony, its three sister mines and all the mineral rights of the Corner House at about R300 million. Harmony alone is worth R163 billion today. His engineers told him the mines were dying, and he believed them. Punch would have asked what they were worth if they lived. Clewlow then sat sixteen years in the chair of what was left, handed it to his son-in-law, and went only when the PIC forced him out.Thomson was given the company by his father-in-law and kept it exactly where it was. Earnings were 812 cents a share when he started and 838 cents nine years later. A decade in the life of a great company went by and nothing was built.Sewela finished the work. He sold Iberia, the motor dealers and the logistics business and handed out Zeda. He bought a starch mill with borrowed money and tried to get out of the contract nine weeks later. Then, while still chief executive, he bought the company himself with a Saudi partner, at a price the board had tested against a valuation and never against another buyer. The shareholders voted no. He got it anyway.The independent board let him. Five directors left the buyer in charge of the business they were selling, agreed not to look for anyone else, and called the price fair. Sixty-three per cent of the votes went against their scheme and 61 per cent against their own fee. In my judgment they did everything the rules required and nothing the owners needed.The defence is that the shareholders were paid, and they were. A share bought in 1990, with every piece kept, returned between 14 and 16 per cent a year, about what the market did. I do not dispute a rand of it. The conglomerate discount of 1993 was real and the unbundling closed it, once. R120 was 66 per cent above the market and above the expert's range.But look at where the money came from. It came from Tiger Brands, Reunert, PPC and the others, after they had left. The companies that were set free did well. The house that set them free grew smaller every year, until one man with a partner could afford to buy it. Paying the owners is not the same as building something, and for thirty years these men treated the two as one.De Beers, in this series, went the same way in the same years, and the two houses crossed at every turn. Barlows helped save the Corner House for the Oppenheimers in 1957 and bought it from them in 1971. Each house was built by a founder who believed it could hold its ground through the cycles. Each was then run by professionals who did not share the belief. At De Beers the chair was bought by a man who had left it. At Barlows it was bought by the man sitting in it.The people are set out below against the decisions that were theirs. The third column is what each did and said. The fourth is my conclusion..The people who built, broke up and bought Barlows, from the annual reports, circulars, announcements and press cited in the references. Pay is given only where the company published it..I saw some of this at the time, and I bought anyway. My 1997 report showed the company as a galleon under full sail, with the unbundled children of 1993 in a dinghy astern. The headline was Farragut's at Mobile Bay: damn the torpedoes. It was not a compliment. It was aimed at a management that went on breaking up the business without considering what it was doing. I used to speak of "the dead hand of Barlows". I recommended the share all the same, and it halved. I was right about the men and wrong to buy their share.Twenty-eight years later the dinghy's passengers are quoted companies of their own, and the galleon has been sold to its captain. It took the Barlows three-quarters of a century to build the house, and the Corner House was older still. It took one generation of managers to take both apart. They were not crooks. They were dull, careful men who had no idea what they had been handed, and that was enough.It took the Barlows three-quarters of a century to build the house. It took one generation of managers to take it apart, one piece at a time, and the last of them bought what was left..APPENDIX AAppendix A. The long ledger: one Barlow Rand share, every receipt to 2026The ledger behind the 1990 holding in Section VII. The holder buys one Barlow Rand share at R33.25 on 27 September 1990, keeps every share distributed and takes every dividend and cash offer at face value. Rights offers are not taken up, except that the PPC rights of 2016 are counted as sold for R5.70, as in Appendix B. Some dividends of CG Smith, Reunert, Rand Mines, Ingwe and Rand Mines Properties are missing and would add to the total. So would the six Randgold & Exploration shares per 100 distributed in February 1993..Receipts by line, at face value, and the shares still held at the closes of 13 November 2026 (Tiger Brands R265.84, Astral R192.53, Spar R46.70, Oceana R70.23, Reunert R50.00, Nampak R534.50, PPC R8.35, Zeda R16.15). The column without dividends counts the shares still held and the cash paid for shares in offers, repurchases and wind-ups, with the Illovo and Nampak rights not taken: about R304 for a share worth about R38 in October 1993. Share counts follow the corporate actions cited in the references; the CG Smith liquidation dividend is taken at 15c, within the company's guidance of 10 to 15c. Every multiplication is the author's..APPENDIX BAppendix B. The ledger of one share bought on 7 July 1997.The ledger of one 1997 share, from the annual reports, results and announcements cited in the references. Dividends are by financial year of declaration; distributions at their entitlement ratios; shares still held at the close of 13 November 2026. Nothing is adjusted for inflation..THE FOUNDERS BUILT A HOUSE AND BOUGHT THE CORNER HOUSE FROM THE OPPENHEIMERS TO PUT INSIDE IT. BETWEEN 1991 AND 2023 THEIR SUCCESSORS DISTRIBUTED OR SOLD ALMOST EVERYTHING THE COMPANY OWNED OUTRIGHT, RETURNED MOST OF THE PROCEEDS, AND LEFT A CATERPILLAR DEALER DEPENDENT ON ONE PRINCIPAL. IN 2025 THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE AND THAT PRINCIPAL'S SAUDI DEALER BOUGHT IT, AFTER THE SHAREHOLDERS HAD SAID NO ONCE.BARLOW RECEIVED 74 PER CENT OF THE GOLD HOUSE IN JANUARY 1993 AND A YEAR LATER WAS SELLING THE LAST OF IT. AT THE PRICE OF THAT LAST SALE THE WHOLE STAKE WAS WORTH R220 MILLION; HARMONY ALONE IS WORTH R163 BILLION TODAY. THE SHAREHOLDERS WERE PAID BY THE COMPANIES THAT LEFT. THE BARLOW SHARE ITSELF EARNED 3.7 PER CENT A YEAR FROM 1990 TO 2026. NOBODY BROKE THE LAW. AFTER PHILLIPS NOBODY BUILT ANYTHING EITHER, AND WHEN THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE CAME TO BUY THE COMPANY THE BOARD DID NOT ASK THE MARKET WHAT IT WAS WORTH. REFERENCESBARLOWORLD: REPORTS, RESULTS AND ANNOUNCEMENTSBarlow Limited. Annual Report 1999 (market capitalisation R4,708m at 2,200c for 1998 and R6,301m at 2,940c for 1999; headline earnings a share 309.7c and 319.7c; employees 27,804 and 22,148; Finanzauto minorities R116m; Phillips chief executive from 1 August 1999). sharedata.co.za.Barloworld Limited. Annual Report 2003 (Clewlow: joined 1963, board 1974, deputy chairman and chief executive 1985, chairman 1991; Thomson finance director from 1 April 2003; Phillips joined 1968, Finanzauto 1992–95). sharedata.co.za.Barloworld Limited. Annual Report 2004 (Avis from end-March 2004; about R4bn of assets; 1,458 employees; 25,233 employees). sharedata.co.za.Barloworld Limited. Annual results for the year to 30 September 2006, 20 November 2006 (HEPS 1,171c; dividend 600c; buybacks at an average of R113.97; "doubling the value of the company before the world cup"). lse.co.uk RNS.Barloworld Limited. Annual Report 2007 (PPC unbundling completed 16 July 2007, R19.3bn distributed; Freeworld approved 23 November, listed 3 December, distributed 10 December 2007; special dividend R5, R1,017m, 2 April 2007; laboratory business about £75m; Steel Tube; Coatings Australia; revenue R43,238m; operating profit R2,741m; HEPS 812c; about 19,000 employees). sharedata.co.za.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 17 November 2010: acquisition of the remaining 50% of Vostochnaya Technica for US$52m.Barloworld Limited. Preliminary audited results for the year to 30 September 2015, 16 November 2015 (revenue R62.7bn; operating profit R3,995m; HEPS 925.5c; return on shareholders' funds 10.9%; 19,745 employees). lse.co.uk RNS.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 25 February 2021: retirement of the chairman after the vote against the remuneration policy.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 10 February 2022: logistics disposals below the reporting thresholds. Annual financial statements 2020, note 22.2 p. 68 and cash-flow note D p. 46 (Middle East and SmartMatta: net assets R31m, loss R32m, net cash proceeds R40m); annual financial statements 2022, note 21.1 p. 76 and note D p. 40 (Aspen 51% effective 1 December 2021 and the Manline and timber transport businesses effective 1 March 2022: net assets R451m, loss R299m, net cash proceeds R124m); annual financial statements 2023, note 21.1 p. 74 and note C p. 38 (warehousing and distribution finalised 31 March 2023, aggregated with Zeda and Crownmill). SA Trucker, 24 November 2021 (Bakers Transport; the Aspen Business Trust).Barloworld Limited. Short-form results announcement, 25 November 2024 (revenue R41.9bn; HEPS 1,022c; 6,234 employees; gross debt R7.9bn).Barloworld Limited. SENS, 11 December 2024: firm intention announcement (Newco; Entsha 51%, Gulf Falcon 49%; R120 plus R3.10; 87% premium to the 30-day VWAP of R65.72; R17.1bn guarantee; Caterpillar's support).Barloworld Limited. Circular to shareholders, 29 January 2025 (Rothschild & Co fairness opinion, R105.53–R119.42; safeguards), as reported by Business Day of the same day.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 21 February 2025: results of the annual general meeting (independent directors re-elected with 56.9–57.4%).Barloworld Limited. SENS, 28 February 2025: scheme resolution not passed; standby offer opened.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 30 June 2025: acceptances of 64,224,014 shares (34.4%); 90% condition waived to 51%; R20m break fee; condition on the final voluntary self-disclosure.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 17 November 2025: resignation of five non-executive directors; appointment of Haytham Zahid, Hamza Zahid and Erdi Kursunoglu.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 28 November 2025: section 124 compulsory acquisition; last day to trade 28 November; suspension 1 December 2025; delisting from the JSE and A2X 27 January 2026; advisers.Barloworld Limited. "Our History", barloworld.com (1902, 1920, 1921, 1927, 1941, 1959, 1969, 1970/71, 1979, 1989, 1992, 1993–94, 2000, 2020 Mongolia and Ingrain, 2025–26 delisting).Barloworld Equipment. "History", barloworld-equipment.com (Caterpillar from 1927; Iberia 1993).Reunert Limited. Annual Reports 2003, 2006 and 2007 (founded 1888; acquired by Barlow Rand 1980; unbundled 1993).Randgold & Exploration Company Limited. "About us" (incorporated 29 September 1992 to take over the gold interests of Rand Mines Limited; suspended 2005; relisted 2010).Harmony Gold Mining Company. "History" (Rand Mines subsidiary from 1950; Randgold 1992; independent September 1997).THE 1971 PURCHASE, THE 1982 DEFENCE AND THE 1993 UNBUNDLINGAnglo American Corporation of South Africa. Annual Report 1971, p. 65 (the scheme of arrangement effective 1 June 1971; 3,400,000 Rand Mines shares for 20,400,000 Barlow shares, six for one; the name changed 28 June 1971; Charter Consolidated's 539,880 shares, 15.9%, for 3,239,280; issued capital after the deal) and p. 61 (Anglo's 1,100,000 Barlow Rand shares). archive.org, Angl2873_1971.Davies, O'Meara and Dlamini. The Struggle for South Africa (Zed, 1984), vol. 1, Barlow Rand entry (SA Mutual 5.2% and Anglo American 12.7% until April 1982; the April 1982 deal; "SA Mutual has assumed effective control of Barlow Rand"). Simons, Old Mutual 1845–1995 (1995) ("the dominant shareholder in the Barlow Rand group in 1982"). Financial Times, 5 April 1982, "Barlow Rand move to take control of Tiger Oats" (two Barlow Rand shares for each Tiger-Sugar share; 11.4m new shares; 126.2m shares in issue; market capitalisation R1,230m; CG Smith 54% owned, to hold 75% of Nampak).Barlow Rand Limited. Notice of 9 August 1993 (Standard Merchant Bank; Ferguson Bros, Hall, Stewart), printed in the Financial Times of 10 August 1993 (interests in Rand Mines, holding 77% of Randcoal, and Rand Mines Properties to be distributed in addition to CG Smith and Reunert, announced 23 June 1993; 3,531,000 CG Smith, 2,397,000 Reunert, 1,118,000 Rand Mines and 1,168,000 Rand Mines Properties shares, 7.5% of each, sold to South African Mutual at the market value of 8 July 1993 for R607m in cash; the residual Barlow Rand: 79% of Bibby, 60% of PPC; implementation by the end of February 1994; the executive board). Financial Times, 10 August 1993 (Gawith, "Barlow Rand to break in four"), 11 August 1993 ("Barlow Rand treads break-up path"; Clewlow; attributable profit R849m in 1992 against R1bn in 1989; Punch Barlow on Rand Mines), 16 November 1993 (Gawith, "Barlow Rand posts 15% decline before unbundling": EPS 367c; attributable R721m; turnover R38bn; the split of 364c between CG Smith 120c, Reunert 57c, Rand Mines 28c, Rand Mines Properties 8c and the new Barlows 151c) and 8 December 1993 (Barlow Rand R48.50). archive.org, Financial Times 1993 UK edition.Correia, Flynn, Uliana and Wormald. Financial Management (Juta, 2000), p. 635 (121.89 CG Smith, 69.66 Reunert, 19.76 Rand Mines and 3.89 Rand Mines Properties shares for every 100 Barlow Rand shares). Financial Mail, Top Companies 1995, p. 143 (the October 1993 Barlow Rand price broken down: new Barlows 37%, CG Smith 39%, Reunert 18%, Rand Mines 5%, Rand Mines Properties 1%; the imputed R83 by May 1995). International Financing Review, issues 1012–1015 (1994) (the odd-lot facility to 7 February 1994; Lazard Brothers). JSE Handbook 1994, p. 161 (implementation scheduled for January 1994).Rand Mines Limited. Notices in the Financial Times of 25 October 1994 (the Randcoal–Trans-Natal merger; Rand Mines' 76.8% of Randcoal diluted), 6 October 1995 (UAL Merchant Bank: 77,533,586 Ingwe shares distributed, 130 for every 100 Rand Mines shares, effective 11 December 1995; 100 Rand Mines shares R4,000 on 13 July 1995 against 130 Ingwe shares R3,672; 10% of Ingwe retained) and 28 August 1996 (the final 16,103,129 Ingwe shares, 27 for every 100, effective 18 November 1996; the listings in Johannesburg and London to end; the company to be wound up). Musiker, Historical Dictionary of Greater Johannesburg (1999), "Rand Mines" and "Barlow, Charles Sydney (Punch)".Reed International. Annual Report 1979 (Reed Nampak sold to Barlow Rand for £36.9m); Financial Times, 29 July, 9 August and 22 August 1978, and 1 May 1979 (R84.6m); Standard Merchant Bank notice, Financial Times, 4 February 1980 (169,508 CG Smith shares, and 7,683 at R650, for Barlow Rand's 55.4% of Nampak; the offer for the rest of CG Smith); Financial Times, 9 May 1980 (Nampak "controlled by Barlow Rand through C.G. Smith and Co.").JSE Centenary 1987: a Commemorative History of All Listed Companies, p. 66 (the 1941 listing by the reverse takeover of W.R. Boustred; capital £500,000); Financial Mail, Barlow Rand survey, 13 February 1981, p. 96; Optima, vol. 44 (1998), p. 33. Financial Times, 6 June 1979 (the death notice; the funeral of 7 June; Barlow Rand at R5.87); The Annual Register 1979 (died 1 June 1979, aged 74); Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. V, p. 30, citing C. S. Barlow 1905–1979 (Barlow Rand, 1980). Brown, All the World Was His Stage (the divorce; Cynthia Barlow and Punch's second marriage).COMPANY HISTORIES AND ARCHIVESInternational Directory of Company Histories, vol. 1 (St James Press, 1988), "Barlow Rand Ltd" (founding 1902; incorporation 29 August 1918; Rand Mines June 1971 for R39 million in stock, "the largest takeover in South African history"; R17.9 million written off; Middelburg Steel "in a disastrous state"; SAB share swap 1966; eight autonomous divisions; 143,959 employees; sales R14.62bn; market value R3.497bn; Rosholt quotations; Union Corporation bid 1974; Nampak 1978; CG Smith 1980; Tiger Oats 1982; Bibby 1984–85). Via fundinguniverse.com and encyclopedia.com.International Directory of Company Histories, "Anglo American Corporation of South Africa" ("Anglo did little to revive" Rand Mines; Barlow acquired all Rand Mines's issued shares in 1971; Anglo 10 per cent of Barlow Rand; "executive control remained in Barlow family hands"; 131 subsidiaries in nine countries by 1972). Via encyclopedia.com.International Directory of Company Histories, "Engelhard Corporation" (the 1957 bailout of Central Mining; Rand American; Engelhard chairman). Via encyclopedia.com.Innes, Duncan. Anglo: Anglo American and the Rise of Modern South Africa (Ravan Press, 1984), pp. 234–235 and Appendix 2 (the Central Mining–Rand Mines takeover; Anglo-group holders of Barlow Rand at end-1976).Fraser, Maryna. "Profile of a South African Company Archive", Archivaria 7 (Winter 1978) (Rand Mines registered 22 February 1893, capital £400,000; the group's activities; Crown Mines, City Deep and CMR wound up 1977; "Group companies are autonomous").Fraser, Maryna. "International Archives in South Africa", Business and Economic History, 2nd series, vol. 16 (1987), pp. 163–173 (the Corner House; Central Mining 1905; Rand Mines pioneered group administration; the divisions).Palframan, Barbara. The Rosholt Years: Chairman of Barlow Rand Limited between 1979 and 1991 (Barlow Rand, 1991).Trade Union Research Project. The Concentration of Economic Power in South Africa (University of Natal, June 1991), pp. 2, 4, 9 (the Barlow Rand group chart and percentages; Clewlow's directorships; the six axes).FAWU Organiser Update, vol. 1 no. 3 (June 1990) (Barlow Rand top of the Financial Mail Top 100; net profit R1.06bn on sales R26.4bn for the year to September 1989). Rhodes University digital archive.Gqubule, Duma. Black Economic Empowerment Transactions in South Africa after 1994, SCIS Working Paper 19 (Wits, April 2021) (Barlow Rand the largest company in the 1980s; the 1994 shares of the JSE by axis; the four companies of the unbundling).Nkongho, Mitteran E. and Daniel Makina. "Long-run performance of corporate spin-offs and sell-offs: Evidence from the JSE Limited", South African Journal of Economic and Management Sciences 23(1), a3683, 2020 (a sample of transactions over 2000–2016, outside which Barlow Rand's 1993 unbundling falls; the introduction says Barlow Rand "set the unbundling era in motion in 1993 by disposing of CG Smith, Rand Mines and Reunert"; parent abnormal returns of 49.06% at 48 months for the sample; CG Smith split 1999 into 57% of Illovo and 56% of Tiger Brands; Blount and Davidson 1996).Rossouw, G.J. "Unbundling the Moral Dispute About Unbundling in South Africa", Journal of Business Ethics 16(10), July 1997, pp. 1019–1028.Robinson, I. "The globalization of the South African mining industry", Journal of the SAIMM 116 (2016), pp. 769–775 ("In September 1992 Barlow Rand announced a restructuring that dismantled the Rand Mines mining house").United States Geological Survey. The Mineral Industry of South Africa, 1995 and 1997 (Ingwe formed 1994, Rand Mines 45.9%; Randgold's acquisitions; PPC 60.3% owned by the Barlow Rand group; Harmony and DRD separated 1997).eProp, 28 May 2003: iProp (formerly Rand Mines Properties) to delist and be wound up after a R67m buy-out.Wikipedia, "Charles Barlow (businessman)", citing Hill and Phillips, Somerset Cricketers 1919–1939 (Halsgrove, 2017), pp. 123–125 (born 10 May 1905; died Sotogrande 1 June 1979; Clifton and Caius; four rugby Blues; Somerset 1925–26; director 1929; managing director 1937; Barlow's lark).Vergelegen Estate, "Heritage"; The Heritage Portal, 22 October 2015 and 27 November 2018 (the Barlow years at Vergelegen; the auction of June 1941; the royal visit of 1947; Anglo American's purchase in October 1987; the Barlow Fountain opened by Harry Oppenheimer, November 1982). Optima (Anglo American), October 1993, p. 19 (Vergelegen sold by the Barlow family to Anglo American Farms in 1987 for R22 million); Postma, Governor or Robber Baron? (1996), p. 30.Cardo, Michael. Opening Men's Eyes: Peter Brown and the Liberal Struggle (2012) ("Punch was a great friend of Harry Oppenheimer"); Harry Oppenheimer: Diamonds, Gold and Dynasty (2023) (Oppenheimer at Vergelegen). Collings, Leaders: A Profile of the Barlow Rand Group (Barlow Rand, 1989), p. 22 ("a family friend" and the Rand Mines bid; the 1966 SAB partnership and Barsab).Optima, vol. 26 (1977), p. 144 (Peter Barlow, Punch's younger brother, joint deputy chairman, died 1975); Financial Mail, Barlow Rand survey, 13 February 1981, p. 14 (Rosholt joint deputy chairman with Peter Barlow); Financial Mail, "Changing focus", 1985, p. 7 (SA Mutual 35.4%); Stafford, Macmillan Directory of Multinationals (1989), vol. 1, p. 141 (34.1%); Stopford, Directory of Multinationals (1992), p. 135 (34.7%); McGregor's Quick Reference to the JSE (1992), p. 119 (SA Mutual the ultimate controlling shareholder; the directors from Clewlow); JSE Handbook 1998, p. 64 (SA Mutual 23.4%; Liberty Life 2.5%).PRESS: THE HOUSE AND ITS PEOPLEFinancial Mail. "Barloworld: Rise of a giant", 25 August 2016 (£1,000; two rented rooms; the wager with the cane farmer; 7s 6d in 1941; R1bn of profit, 240,000 employees and 79th on the Fortune 500 in 1989; the spin-offs).Allix, Mark. "Barloworld celebrates 75 years on the JSE", Business Day via Bizcommunity, 18 August 2016 (245,000 employees; Thomson on the listing).Business Day. "Old-style firms with a finger in every pie", 16 March 2018 (Old Mutual's strategic stake; the house magazine; Rosholt "dominated Barlow Rand for almost three decades").Hogg, Alec. "OBIT: Mike Rosholt", BizNews, 6 March 2018 (the biography by Halvor Rosholt). The Presidency, National Orders 2009 (Order of the Baobab in Silver). Joint Education Trust notice, 2018.Cape Times, 30 August 2017, and Engineering News, 16 June and 15 September 2017 (the Caterpillar agreement of 17 August 1927; Mandela at the centenary).Mail & Guardian. "Barloworld crosses the Rubicon", 26 January 2007 (the PIC's 17.6%; three of eighteen directors; Clewlow's retirement; Thomson his son-in-law; "open to nepotism charges"; Ntsebeza interim chairman; "repositioned as a distribution company"; the share at R191.80).Business Report, 23 and 27 January 2007 ("Ultimate corporate survivor to bow out under PIC cloud"; "Clewlow blown away by harsh winds of change") (headlines).Mail & Guardian, 16 November 2005 (Phillips: doubling the value in four years) and 20 December 2006 via CemNet (PPC spin-off; Phillips steps down after 39 years).Mail & Guardian. "Barloworld goes broad", 26 June 2008, and "Barloworld reprices BEE ownership deal", 5 August 2008 (R2.4bn deal; Sewela a strategic partner; Ntsebeza's fee; repriced from R103.87 to R83.31; the share at R63.84).Sunday Times. "Barloworld's tragic disintegration", 1 September 2009 (Clewlow sold Persetel, Reunert, CG Smith and ISM in the 1990s).Engineering News. "Outgoing Barloworld CEO on surviving tough times", 10 March 2017 (Thomson's account of his decade; "about R2.3-billion"; Russia 2009; "very pleased").Engineering News, 3 October 2016 (Sewela chief executive designate); 25 April and 12 June 2018 (Iberia sold to Tesa for R2.18bn; share down 7%); 2 March 2020 (Ingrain R5.35bn); 5 February 2021 (motor retail R947m); 13 December 2022 (Zeda listed); 14 October 2022 (Russian order book).Business Day. 3 February 2020 (Mongolia R3.25bn); 22 September 2020 (Rothschild finds no material adverse change; the share at R58.73, down 47.9%); 28 September 2021 (logistics exit); 26 May 2022 (R1.03bn Russia impairment; buyback; "well below intrinsic value"); 14 November 2023 (logistics disposed of 31 March 2023); 30 September 2024 (the self-disclosure to the US Bureau of Industry and Security; "This is about export control"); 2 September 2025 (no sanctions violations found).Daily Maverick, 23 May 2022 (Sewela: "We do not want to disinvest at the slightest challenge") and 16 September 2024 (Russia 12% of revenue, down from 23%; the share's largest fall in seventeen years).The Citizen / Moneyweb, 2 February 2021 ("a bit of a hotch-potch"; "I just can't see a strategy") and 2 December 2024 ("a massive conflict of interests").Forkliftaction, 3 May and October 2012 (US Hyster assets for about US$60m; UK handling to Briggs).PRESS: THE TAKE-PRIVATEDaily Maverick / Bloomberg, 6 August 2024 (Zahid in talks; 18.9%; four years of buying).Business Day. 11 December 2024 ("Barloworld rockets on buyout and delisting offer"); 18 December 2024 (Motsoeneng's column; its multiple of 4.3× EBITDA cannot be reproduced from any disclosed figure and is not used here); 29 January 2025 (the Rothschild range; the safeguards); 13 February 2025 (ISS, Glass Lewis, Moody's; Caterpillar 83% of revenue; Silchester); 28 February 2025 (editorial, "Bias in the boardroom"); 2 March 2025 (the vote; the PIC's statement; Silchester); 3 April 2025 (Kgomoeswana); 15 May 2025 (Cranston); 3 July 2025 (condition waived); 17 August 2025 (Tribunal approval and conditions); 10 November 2025 ("Barloworld clears final hurdle": 139.5m shares; 96.5%; R23.3bn).Financial Mail. Crotty, Ann. "Shareholders tell Barloworld board to take a hike", 27 February 2025, and the columns "Why Barloworld's CEO should be benched" and "Barloworld's buyout bid: It gets sneakier" (headlines; the texts are behind the paywall).Business Report, 26 February 2025 (the scheme vote), 6 October 2025 (the Takeover Regulation Panel ruling; 81.4%), 30 January 2026 (the delisting; Sewela's career; the new owners); the press counts 86 years from the 1941 listing inclusively, this report 85.Engineering News, 23 April 2025 (the PIC's irrevocable undertaking and the 13.5% empowerment promise).BusinessTech, 6 October 2025 (the Panel ruling; "disagrees with the ruling but ... proceed[s] with settlement") and 10 February 2026 (Sewela: "If you're listed, you spend a lot of time with analysts and asset managers").Billionaires.Africa, 17 August 2025 (Tribunal conditions) and 27 January 2026 (the R43.5m and R21.8m, which the remuneration report 2025 pp. 14–17 shows to be the December 2024 vesting of the 2019 and 2021 awards, not settlements at R120).IOL / Business Report, 17 November 2025 (FY2025: HEPS down 21% to 810c; revenue R37.7bn; net debt R884m; free cash flow R1.7bn; net asset value a share; Russia "trading close to breakeven"; R2.6bn cash in Russia) and 26 January 2026 (delisted after 86 years).AFX (afx.kwayisi.org), Barloworld: last trade R118.30 on 28 November 2025; 190m shares.THE AUTHOR'S OWN REPORTSmith Borkum Hare, a member of the Merrill Lynch group. South Africa Industrial Holding: Barlow Limited, "Damn the Torpedoes — Full Steam Ahead with Internationalisation", by Dr Duarte da Silva and Jacob Greenblatt, 7 July 1997 (R47.95 / US$10.75; market capitalisation R9.9bn; 27.7% of attributable earnings in foreign currency; 79% of J Bibby & Sons; Caterpillar 24% and handling 12% of revenue; Taubmans; earnings a share forecasts of 349c, 421.1c and 499.8c; capital expenditure R2.3bn; net debt R2.1bn to R3.2bn; 25% of Persetel at R27 worth R1.8bn; PE of 12.6× ex-Persetel; valuations of 5913c, 6070c and 5909c; worst case 4760c; price objective 6378c; D-1-1-7). Reproduced as the plate. © 1997 Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Limited.THE LEDGER OF ONE SHAREBarlow Limited / Barloworld Limited. Annual Reports 1999 (dividends 124c and 141c; shares in issue 214m; year-end prices 5,325c, 2,200c, 2,940c), 2001 (180c, 220c), 2003 (275c, 290c), 2005 (380c, 455c), 2007 (375c; special 500c; PPC R19.3bn); results booklet for the year to 30 September 2014 (291c, 320c); results announcements of 21 November 2016 (345c, 345c) and 20 November 2017 (390c); Integrated Report 2019 (462c; special 228c paid 13 January 2020); results of November 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 (437c and special 1,350c; 460c and special 550c; 500c; 520c; interim 120c).Barloworld Limited. Integrated Report 2013, "Ordinary shares performance – JSE": year-end prices, dividend yields and total shareholder return 2007–2013 (2007: 78.6 per cent, "calculated taking into account the growth in the Barloworld share price, the value of PPC shares distributed to shareholders per the entitlement ratio, the Barloworld interim, final and special dividends and the PPC final and special dividends"); Alsi 29,959 at 30 September 2007. The 2008–2010 dividends in the ledger are the published figures (250c, 110c, 75c), cross-checked against this table's yields and prices.Barloworld Limited. SENS, 5 July 2007 (entitlement of 1.8555 subdivided PPC shares a Barloworld share; last day to trade 6 July; record date 13 July; unbundling 16 July 2007; 71.67% of PPC; 537,612,390 PPC shares after the ten-for-one subdivision), and SENS, 25 July 2007 (closing prices of 17 July 2007 for tax: PPC R51.30, Barloworld R128.90); Annual Report 2007, note 35.4 (Barloworld R214.50 before and R125 after the distribution, 41.7%) and p. 11 (total shareholder return 79%; PPC's dividends equivalent to 308c a Barloworld share); circular of 17 May 2007 and general meeting of 8 June 2007; SENS, 8 November 2007 (203,843,388 Freeworld shares, one a Barloworld share; listing 3 December; record date 7 December; distribution 10 December 2007), SENS, 12 December 2007 (closes of 11 December for tax: Barloworld R114.40, Freeworld R10.75) and Annual Report 2008, note 34.4 (R114.60 to R107.50, 6.2%); Freeworld Coatings Annual Report 2008 (market capitalisation R1,608.5m at 30 September 2008); circular on the unbundling of Zeda, November 2022 (one share a Barloworld share).International Business Times / Reuters, 3 February 2011: Kansai Paint's offer of R12 a Freeworld share; R1.8bn for the 72 per cent it did not own.The River Club, Johannesburg: club history (founded 1966 by Punch Barlow; Harry Oppenheimer among his friends; the two supplied the initial capital).FRED / OECD, rand per US dollar, annual averages 1996–2025 (series CCUSMA02ZAA618N); LBMA annual average gold prices (1992 US$344.97; 1997 US$331); IMF Primary Commodity Prices, monthly gold (London), July 1997 US$324.09.Randgold & Exploration. Circular of 9 June 2006 and later restatements (12,360,000 Randgold Resources shares at 31 December 2002 on the restated count); Randgold Resources prospectus, July 2002 (about 59 per cent before and 48 per cent after the share issue).Barloworld Limited. Directors' emoluments: Annual Report 2000 pp. 74–75 and 2001 pp. 86–87 (executive directors in aggregate R30.4m for 1999, R30.7m for 2000, R30.0m for 2001; Clewlow R1,367,000 and Phillips R3,924,000 for 2001); Annual Report 2002 pp. 132–133 (Clewlow R1,600,000; Phillips R4,943,000); 2003 p. 184 (Clewlow R4,204,000; Phillips R5,651,000; Thomson R1,154,000); 2004 pp. 164–165 (R1,823,000; R6,751,000; R4,317,000); 2005 pp. 178–180 (R4,599,000; R11,073,000; R5,763,000); 2006 pp. 253–255 (R2,206,000; R8,603,000 plus option gains R3,015,000; R5,191,000 plus R4,525,000); 2007 pp. 247–249 (R818,000; R21,299,000 of which other benefits R16,707,000; R10,803,000 plus R3,844,000); 2008 pp. 238–240 (Thomson R9,009,000 plus R1,876,000); 2009 pp. 193–195 (R9,458,000); annual financial statements 2012, note 35 (Thomson R11,150,000 for 2010, R14,966,000 for 2011, R15,557,000 for 2012). All on sharedata.co.za.Barloworld Limited. Remuneration reports 2013 to 2017 (Thomson R18,116,000; R15,627,000; R14,881,000; R16,425,000; R42,987,000 for 2017, of which other benefits R32,847,000 and short-term incentive R5,852,000; Sewela R19,179,000 for 2017), barloworld-reports.co.za; remuneration reports 2018 to 2025 (Sewela single figure R29,729,000; R22,513,000; R10,470,000; R31,037,000; R35,980,000 at p. 33; R81,904,000 at p. 33, long-term incentives R50,371,000; R27,714,000 at p. 31; R14,284,000 at p. 14), barloworld.com. Remuneration report 2025 pp. 14–17: the R21,804,353 to Sewela and R43,458,337 to five executives as the vesting on 6 December 2024 of the 2019 share appreciation rights and the awards of 7 December 2021 at R92.65 and R92.89; footnote 1, p. 17, on the accelerated vesting of outstanding awards at the transaction date, deemed vesting of 68%, 215% and 112.5% for the 2022, 2023 and 2024 conditional shares and 30%, 100% and 65% for the forfeitable shares, settled in cash at R120 from November 2025; Sewela's unvested awards at 30 September 2025 of 66,400, 190,021, 312,420 and 292,230 shares; nine months' notice; the change-of-control redundancy clause; the 2024 remuneration votes of 78.24% and 78.53%.Barloworld Limited. SENS firm intention announcement, 11 December 2024 (Dr Nolulamo Gwagwa, chair of the independent board; Entsha wholly owned by DKMS Group, owned by the Katlego Le Masego Trust; Standard Bank guarantee of R17,156,628,840); circular of 29 January 2025, §9 p. 40 (the consideration "fully funded from funds to be made available to the Consortium from SBSA"), §12 p. 43 (the term sheet of 23 February 2024) and §14 pp. 44–45 (Sewela 812,975 shares, 0.4%; the Trust 417,470; Zahid 35,834,624, 18.9%); FY2025 results and audited statements (net asset value 9,141c a share; the export-control findings and the auditors' reportable irregularity).BARLOW PARKBarloworld Limited. Annual Report 2008, p. 3 (registered office 180 Katherine Street) and p. 15 (the Leadership Development Centre at Barlow Park); Integrated Report 2018, p. 19 (the corporate centre relocated in November 2018 "to make way for the redevelopment of the Barlow Park precinct"); annual financial statements 2018, assets held for sale (R497m including "the Barlow Park office park") and company note 17; results for the year to 30 September 2019 (senspdf, ye19.pdf), p. 7 (redevelopment "commenced in April 2019 however the property is yet to be sold to the consortium") and p. 31, note 6 ("in the process of being sold into a consortium of investors"; held for sale R93m in 2018 and 2019); Integrated Report 2019, p. 42 and p. 100 (net income of the corporate segment lower by about R125m a year); annual financial statements 2020, p. 33 (no longer held for sale), note 22.2 p. 82 and company note 11 p. 155 (reclassification of R112m cost and R19m depreciation); annual financial statements 2021, p. 95 (R434m approved for the revised plan); results for the year to 30 September 2022 (ye2022.pdf), p. 6 ("Barloworld has contributed the land and 50% of the equity"); annual financial statements 2022, note 31 (R46m), p. 72 (Barlow Park Residential Property Ltd a 50% associate), p. 121 (related parties) and company note 9.2 p. 135 (held for sale R57m); annual financial statements 2023, note 21.2 p. 76 and company note 9.1 p. 130; annual financial statements 2024, note 13 pp. 65–66 (the joint venture's balance sheet and loss; loans R186m; discount rate 16.7%), note 21.2 p. 72 and company note 9 p. 123 (transfer registered 30 May 2024; "no cash impact"; profit R18m); company income statement p. 115; annual financial statements 2025, pp. 62–63 (the joint venture in 2025; loans R211m; loss limitation R30m), p. 79 (commitments; the commission dispute) and p. 110 (related parties).Barloworld, Atterbury and African Rainbow Capital. Joint announcement, 7 December 2017, on barloworld.com ("we are moving"), eProp and Engineering News (one-third each; 130,000 square metres; "well over R3 billion"; Sewela: "a symbolic major shift in our ethos and perspective of managing for value"). BusinessTech, 4 October 2018 (the precinct to house the group's new head office). Property Wheel, 28 February 2019, and Engineering News, 15 March 2019 (construction to begin May 2019). Engineering News, 17 May 2018 and 6 March 2019 (the logistics and equipment head offices at Irene and Isando). barloworld.com, "Our History" (corporate office to 61 Katherine Street, November 2018). Wits Historical Papers, "Mining archives at Wits" (the Barlow World Rand Mines archive moved to the Education Library basement in 2019, refurbishment funded by Barloworld). National Archives of South Africa, directory of archives 2005, entry 16 (the group archive at Barlow Park: Eckstein, Wernher Beit, Central Mining, Rand Mines, Barlow, CG Smith, Sir Lionel Phillips).Atterbury, Divercity and Moolman Group. Announcements of 2 June 2022 (Atterbury with Barloworld, Divercity, Moolman Group and Twin City; 4,100 flats in eleven blocks; retail anchored by Checkers and Clicks; Sewela quoted), 2 May 2023, September 2023 (leasing from R4,899 a month) and February 2024 (first residents 31 January 2024; retail opened 29 February 2024); atterbury.co.za and moolmangroup.co.za portfolio pages (phase two of 846 flats completed June 2025). Business Day, 13 September 2023 (Mhlanga: ten hectares; "phases one and two cost about R1.5bn"). Sandton Times, 10 June 2022 (the original office plan paused by the lockdown). Business Day, 15 May 2025 (Cranston on Barlow Park).Barloworld Limited. Khula Sizwe: circular of 18 December 2018, Integrated Report 2019 pp. 34–36 (68 properties "independently valued at R2.9 billion, sold at a 5% discount (R2.7 billion)"; R2.2bn of Nedbank debt and R544m of equity; ten-year triple-net lease escalating at 8% a year) and SENS of 9 April 2019 (price R2,716m; valuer Broll Valuation and Advisory Services; debt R2,172m at 9.59%); annual financial statements 2021, note 4.1 (63 of 64 properties transferred).THE DESCENDANTSCG Smith Limited: Business Report, 26 November 1998, "CG Smith group to sever its foods arm" (60% of Nampak; 81% of CG Smith Foods, which held 51% of Illovo and 56% of Tiger Oats) and 19 November 1999, "CG Smith in R12bn unbundling" (50.13% of Tiger, R5.4bn; 59.45% of Nampak, R5.3bn; 50.42% of Illovo, R1.1bn; "more than R11.6 billion"; the discount narrowed from about 16% to 4%; Old Mutual about 20% of each). Nkongho and Makina, SAJEMS 23(1) 2020, p. 1.Tiger Brands Limited. Annual Report 2004, p. 47 (one Spar share for each Tiger Brands share; Spar listed 18 October 2004) and p. 44 (an effective 41% of Oceana); Business Report, 27 September 2004 (over 168 million Spar shares; record date 22 October); The Namibian, October 2004 (Spar opened at R22.07, "around 3.4 billion rand"). Fin24, 21 July 2008, and Mail & Guardian, 21 July 2008 (one Adcock Ingram share for each Tiger Brands share; listed 25 August 2008; Tiger had paid R3.4bn for Adcock in 1999). Engineering News, 22 November 2018 and 24 January 2019 (Tiger's 42.1% of Oceana; 8,000,000 shares to Brimstone for R581.4m); Oceana SENS, 26 March 2019 (Tiger from 42.13% to 36.23%); Tiger Brands results for the year to 30 September 2019, note 9 (49,104,774 Oceana shares distributed, approved 3 April 2019, concluded 29 April 2019, dividend in specie R3,369.2m); Oceana SENS, 26 June 2019 (a further 1,500,000 shares to Brimstone at R69.9312).Adcock Ingram Holdings: joint firm intention announcement with Natco Pharma, 23 July 2025 (R75.00 a share in cash; premium 43.7%; Natco to hold about 35.75% and Bidvest about 64.25%; Investec guarantee capped at R4,000m); results of the scheme meeting, 10 October 2025 (50,351,444 shares in the scheme; 98.66% in favour); finalisation announcement, 24 October 2025 (last day to trade 4 November; implementation 10 November; delisting 11 November 2025). The whole-company figure of R10.6bn is the author's arithmetic: R75 × 140.8m shares (50,351,444 ÷ 0.3575).Associated British Foods. Announcement of 8 April 2016 (the 48.65% of Illovo it did not own at R25 a share, R5.6bn, £262m; control bought in 2006). The whole-company figure of R11.5bn is the author's arithmetic, R5.6bn ÷ 0.4865.Kansai Paint. Firm intention announcement, 13 December 2010 (R12.00 a share; 203,871,939 Freeworld shares in issue; Kansai's 56,193,664, 27.56%; 16.2 times earnings); Freeworld interim results, 24 June 2011 (Kansai at 92.4%); IBTimes/Reuters, 3 February 2011 (R1.8bn for the 72%). AkzoNobel announcement, 1 June 2022 (the African business of Kansai Paint); Competition Commission prohibition, 9 November 2022; Kansai Paint's termination of the agreement, 29 November 2023.Randgold & Exploration Company. Form 20-F for 2002, filed 14 July 2003, Item 4 (established September 1992 to take over Rand Mines' gold and mineral rights, equity holdings and management agreements; service agreements cancelled as of 30 September 1997 and "a significant portion of the investment holdings" since disposed of); Form 20-F for 2003 (1,500,000 DRD shares sold March 2002; 3,000,000 in 2003; 315,000 Harmony shares still held through Viking Pony). Harmony Gold Mining Company, Form 20-F for 2002, Item 4 ("not the practice of the founding mining house to retain a majority shareholding"; the management agreement cancelled in late 1994; the service agreement terminated in 1997). Durban Roodepoort Deep, Form 20-F for 2002, Item 4A (the 1992 restructuring; Blyvoor for 12,693,279 and Buffels for 14,300,396 DRD shares on 15 September 1997; the Argonaut rights bought from Randgold in August 1997). Financial Times, 28 October 1997, "Randgold completes unbundling process".United States Geological Survey. The Mineral Industry of South Africa, 1995, Table 2 (Ingwe: Trans-Natal 49.1%, Rand Mines 45.9%; formed by the 1994 merger of Trans-Natal and Randcoal; Duvha Opencast 71% Rand Mines; Barplats 30.6%), 1997 (Harmony "spun off by Rand Gold and Exploration Co. in 1997 as an independent company") and 1998 (Ingwe 100% Billiton). Robinson, SAIMM 116(8) 2016, pp. 771–772 (Billiton plc issued shares on its July 1997 listing to acquire Gencor's interests in Alusaf, Samancor and Ingwe; the BHP merger of March 2001; South32 announced 19 August 2014). South32: announcement of 6 November 2019 (the original Seriti terms: about R100m up front and 49% of free cash flow to March 2024, capped at R1.5bn a year), 1 April 2021 (amended to a nominal consideration, the deferred consideration removed, US$200m of rehabilitation funding and a US$50m restructuring facility) and 1 June 2021 (completion).South African Iron and Steel Institute, "History" (Southern Cross Steel 1964; the steel division of Middelburg Steel & Alloys 1968; MS&A Stainless 1990; Highveld and Samancor acquired the stainless facility from the Barlow group in 1991, forming Columbus; the IDC in 1993; Acerinox 64% from 1 January 2002 and 76% from 13 May 2005). SAIMM, Pyro2006, "Samancor Chrome" (MS&A Chromium taken over by Samancor in 1991). Fin24/Reuters, 13 November 2001 (Acerinox: 64% of Columbus for €232m in 5.8 million new shares). BHP Billiton, Form 6-K, 17 February 2005 (Samancor Chrome sold to Kermas at an enterprise value of US$469m).THE TAKE-PRIVATE: THE DOCUMENTSBarloworld Limited and K2024528179 (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd. Joint firm intention announcement, 11 December 2024 (SENS S498627), pp. 1–6, 13–14 (R120 and the R3.10 dividend; 66% and 83% premia; 189,641,787 shares in issue, 3,202,832 treasury, 43,467,048 excluded: Zahid 35,834,624, the Foundation 6,578,121, Sewela 653,207, the Trust 401,096; 142,971,907 shares to be acquired; the Standard Bank guarantee of R17,156,628,840; the independent board; Caterpillar's support). Combined offer circular, 29 January 2025, 106 pp. (barloworld.com/pdf/circulars/2025/barloworld-circular2025.pdf): p. 2 (Newco's directors D M Sewela, K Sewela, A A Sfeir, A R Sami), p. 19 (Caterpillar SARL), p. 22 (the Katlego Le Masego Trust, IT002613/2018(T)), p. 30 (3.1–3.2: Entsha 51%, Falcon 49%; "Caterpillar has expressed its support for the implementation of the Newco Offer"), pp. 33–36 (conditions; 6.4(b) premia), p. 37 (7.2: the 90% condition, waivable), p. 40 (§9, "fully funded ... from SBSA"; §10.1 the MAC floor), p. 41 (§10.3 exclusivity, non-solicitation, match right, 5% superior proposal), p. 43 (§12 the term sheet of 23 February 2024), pp. 44–46 (§14–17: holdings; the independent board's fees), pp. 51–57 (Annexure 1, Rothschild & Co: R105.53–R119.43, most likely R112.48; methods; Russia on extractable cash; "have not interviewed any Barloworld Ordinary Shareholders"; the licence assumption; fee R12m), pp. 76–78 (Annexure 8: the timeline from 26 February 2024), p. 79 (the general meeting; the excluded voters).Barloworld Limited. SENS: results of the general meeting, 26 February 2025 (36.63% for, 63.37% against; 121,187,795 shares voted; SR3 61.45% against); standby offer opened, 28 February 2025; Newco's no-increase statement, 13 February 2025; the PIC's irrevocable undertaking, 23 April 2025 (41,588,000 shares, 21.93%; the 13.5% empowerment commitment; support 46.93%); extension of 9 May 2025; waiver of the 90% condition, 30 June 2025 (64,224,014 shares, 34.4%; "at least 51%"; R20m break fee); Competition Commission recommendation, 9 June 2025; Competition Tribunal approval, 18 August 2025, and Order LM015Apr25 of 15 August 2025 with Annexures A and B; offer unconditional, 1 October 2025; settlement and the Takeover Regulation Panel's ruling of 4 October 2025 (R120, not R118.80; on submissions by Bowmans and Protea Capital Management), 6 October 2025; section 122 disclosure, 23 October 2025 (90.6% with concert parties); results of the standby offer, 10 November 2025 (139,502,605 shares, 97.6%; 96.5% of all shares); section 124 notice, 28 November 2025 (suspension 1 December; payment 22 January 2026); JSE and A2X delisting approval, 23 January 2026 (delisting from 27 January 2026). Barloworld press releases of 26 February 2025 ("not market practice ... to place conflicted members of management on long-term gardening leave") and 29 January 2026 ("A New Dawn").Barloworld Limited. Annual financial statements for the year to 30 September 2024 (senspdf ye2024.pdf): p. 25 (supplier relationships "do not have a finite term"); pp. 38–39 (Russia segment); note 20 p. 69 (restricted cash R1,738m, Russia R1,593m); HEPS 1,022.1c; net debt R1,406m; EBITDA R5,110m; net asset value 8,798c. Annual financial statements for the year to 30 September 2025 (ye2025.pdf): pp. 10, 15, 79 (the export-control disclosure; the reportable irregularity); pp. 39–40 (Russia R1,815m revenue, R94m result); note 20 p. 66 (Russia cash R2,599m, US$150.6m, no longer restricted after the intra-group restructuring); p. 110 (note 40: Newco 70.8% and 94.1% at 7 November 2025); HEPS 810.0c; net debt R884m; net asset value 9,141c.Caterpillar Inc. Form 10-K for 2024, Item 1 (41 dealers in the United States and 111 outside; agreements "terminable at will by either party primarily upon 90 days written notice"); Form 10-K for 2015, the same.Moneyweb / The Citizen, 2 December 2024 (analysts: "a massive conflict of interests"; "suspended pending a disciplinary hearing"); Moneyweb, 17 December 2024 (Silchester, 17.7%, 33,531,795 shares: not below R130; "with new management, a reasonable board of directors and proper capital allocation, is well placed to succeed"); Moneyweb, 31 January 2025 (the governance annexure "unconvincing"); Financial Mail, 5 February 2025 (Crotty; Silchester: "the independent directors have failed to fulfil their fiduciary responsibilities"); Moneyweb, 10 and 27 February 2025 (Goeller; 42% against the directors at the annual meeting); Engineering News, 28 February 2025 (the PIC's statement); Moneyweb, 23 April 2025 (the PIC's undertaking); Business Day, 18 December 2024 (Motsoeneng, headline); Financial Mail, "Victory for Barloworld investors" (the Panel ruling).Peer multiples at 29 January 2025: Yahoo Finance closes of that day and the last reported headline earnings a share from each company's results announcement (Bidvest R255.80, 1,912.6c; Invicta R31.02, 470c; Hudaco R201.80, 2,148c; Super Group R29.37, 353.8c; Motus R110.35, 1,479c; Raubex R48.93, 476.3c; WBHO R214.74, 2,020.7c). Barloworld's own multiples are the author's arithmetic from the figures above.THE 1997 LEDGER AND BENCHMARKSFinancial Times, 19 November 1997 (Barlow's 1997 results: the final dividend 88c, the year's total 124c); 17 November 1998 (dividends unchanged at 124c; the Comparex sale for R1.38bn); 8 July 1997 (World Stock Markets: the JSE all-share 7,293.2 on 7 July 1997). Barlow Limited, Annual Report 1999, p. 2 (50 million Comparex shares; exceptional profits R875m), p. 7 (year-end prices, highs and lows 1997–1999; the 1997 dividend yield 2.3%), p. 10 and p. 39 (the R1.4bn of November 1998; net interest paid R190m to R23m); Annual Report 2000, p. 16 (the Dimension Data and Comparex sales), p. 37 (Avis R395m; the buy-back of 17 million shares for R768m), pp. 47–48, p. 52 (the seven-year summary: dividends 1994–2000), p. 58 (the 1999 cash flow), note 8 p. 72 (proceeds R1,378m, profit R1,043m; 2000 proceeds R936m, profit R698m), note 22 p. 84 (16,978,600 shares at an average of R45.25); Annual Report 2001, note 12 p. 79 (2,046,600 shares at R43.80; 19,025,200 in all at R45.09) and note 26 p. 92. Tech Monitor, 19 April 1996 (Persetel 29% owned by Barlow); ITWeb, 8 August 1997 (the Persetel–Q Data merger); The Register, 13 November 1998 (renamed Comparex).Barloworld Limited. Annual Report 2007, p. 1 and p. 8 (total shareholder return 79%), pp. 174–175 (the seven-year summary: Barloworld and all-share total returns 2001–2007; all-share dividend yields), p. 245 (note 35.4); Annual Report 2009, pp. 116–117 (2008 and 2009). Dividend numbers and payment dates from the annual reports 2000 and 2001.PPC Limited. Annual Report 2009, pp. 76–77 and note 25 p. 131 (dividends 2003–2009); results announcements of 11 May 2010, 8 November 2011, 13 November 2012, 19 November 2013 and 18 November 2014 (dividends 2010–2014); Profile's Stock Exchange Handbook 2020–2022 (the 2015 interim and final, Nos 223 and 224, the last distributions before 2024); SENS of 23 and 24 August and 19 September 2016 (the rights offer: 1,000,000,000 shares at R4.00, 160.06486 per 100, theoretical ex-rights price R5.92, 92% taken up); SENS of 2024 and 6 June 2025 (dividends Nos 225–227: 13.7c, the 33.5c special, 17.6c); the June 2026 declaration of 30.2c.Freeworld Coatings. SENS of 18 November 2008, 2009 and 24 November 2010 (dividends of 10c + 10c, 5c + 7c, and 7c, no interim "due to the corporate action"). Zeda Limited. Results and dividend declarations 2024–2026 (100c for 2024; 55c and 126c for 2025; 80c interim June 2026); Barloworld annual financial statements 2023, pp. 76–78 (the Zeda distribution at R3,167m; tax R205m). Yahoo Finance, the JSE All Share index at the close of 13 November 2026 (J203 112,387.86).THE ENTITLEMENT CHAIN, 1993 TO 2026CG Smith Limited. SENS summaries of 19 November 1999 (16.18 Tiger Oats, 32.42 Illovo and 58.99 Nampak per 100 CG Smith shares; 40c cash; delisting 18 February 2000; liquidation dividend guided at 10–15c), 20 December 1999 (IVS to Bidvest, R257m), 24 January 2000 ("about 55c") and 17 February 2000 (approved); 21 May 1999 (CG Smith Foods into CG Smith). Tiger Oats / Tiger Brands. SENS of 19 March and 5 April 2001 (Astral: 25 per 100; 41,436,109 shares; 165,643,235 Tiger shares), 23 September and 20 October 2004 (Spar one for one; 168,763,670 shares), 14 July and 28 September 2005 (the empowerment scheme: 4 shares per 100 at R112), 21 July and 2 September 2008 (Adcock one for one; closes of 1 September 2008 R133.00 and R35.80), 5 and 25 April 2019 (Oceana: 25.86927 per 100; 49,104,774 shares; 179,492,168 Tiger shares net of treasury). Adcock Ingram. SENS of January 2014 (the Bidvest partial offer at R70) and 24 October 2025 (Natco's R75; record date 7 November; delisting). Nampak. SENS of 7 September and 4 November 2005 (10% repurchased at R15.13), 18 July 2023 (1-for-250 consolidation), 31 August and 26 September 2023 (rights offer: 2.20902 per share at R175; 90.08% taken up). Illovo Sugar. SENS of 15 June and 23 August 2006 (ABF: 51.00614 per 100 at R21), 6 August 2009 (rights: 30.83459 per 100 at R27.69), 8 April and 6 June 2016 (R25; record date 24 June 2016). Reunert. SENS of 12 August 2004 (10% acquired at R25; record date 23 September 2004); shares in issue 204,000,264 (2000). Rand Mines. SENS summary of November 1996 (27 Ingwe per 100; delisting 18 November 1996); Ingwe. SENS summaries of 7 July and September 1998 (Billiton's offer of 2,500c cash per Ingwe share; delisting 25 September 1998). iProp Holdings. SENS of 21 January, 31 March and May–July 2003 (the R67.0m cash and 7,000,000 iFour units, R6.18 a share on 16,675,700 shares; record date 18 July 2003; delisted 22 July 2003). International Financing Review, issues 1012–1015 (1994) (the odd-lot prices: CG Smith R16.39, Reunert R14.25, Rand Mines R11.88, Rand Mines Properties R12.59). Yahoo Finance closes of 13 November 2026: Tiger Brands R265.84, Spar R46.70, Oceana R70.23, Nampak R534.50, Reunert R50.00, Astral R192.53, PPC R8.35, Zeda R16.15.THE PURCHASE OF 1971, THE FAMILY AND THE 1993 DECISIONFinancial Times, 29 July 1971, p. 20 (the Barlow Rand and Rand Mines boards reconstituted; Rosholt joint deputy chairman and managing director); 27 September 1971, p. 37 (Barlow Rand's announcement on Middelburg Steel & Alloys: the 38.6% interest, the losses of 1968–70, the loss of about R4.5m forecast for 1971, "the production and accumulation of stocks of stainless steel", the R9.7m written off against reserves before 1 June 1971, earnings a share "will not be affected"); 13 November 1971, p. 11 (results: 20,400,000 shares allotted; 22.5c forecast in April 1971; 22.7c earned); 3 November 1973, p. 1 (Harmony the "super mine"); 9 November 1973, p. 13 (Rand Mines Properties a subsidiary from 20 March 1973; TGME 81.7% for R761,000; property companies R2,558,000); 10 November 1979 ("Upsurge at Barlow Rand": operating profit R290.2m, turnover R2.28bn, TCL turnover R207.4m and pre-tax profit R65.6m, dividends 38c, earnings 118.8c); 5 November 1980 ("Acquisitions raise sales and profits": operating profit R464.9m, turnover R3.76bn, net profit R343.5m against R201.5m, gold and coal profits "substantially higher", dividend 58c); 6 June 1979, p. 7 (death notice); 11 June 1979, p. 35 (Rosholt chairman); 24 June 1993 (Reuter: CG Smith and Reunert); 10 August 1993 (Gawith, "Barlow Rand to break in four"); 11 August 1993 (Gawith, "Barlow Rand treads break-up path": the three-man committee, "the driving force", "strenuously contesting", 544c to 387c, "no point in taking the group even further", "conceptually flawed", "the assembled calamities on the mining side", Punch's "many more problems than we anticipated"); 16 November 1993 (the last results before unbundling). All read in the archive.org full-text copies.Mining Journal, 4 May 1956 (W. M. Frames, Rand Mines chairman: six of twelve mines marginal, reserves falling), 31 August 1956 and 7 December 1956 (the Gold Fields merger), 8 February 1957 (merger off), 31 May 1957 (Glazer's offer; half the ordinaries held on the Continent and voteless), 16 August 1957 ("A New Mining Finance House": Rand American Investments, £3,500,000, the subscribers including Thos. Barlow and Sons; Engelhard, Hagart, Stratten), 30 August 1957 (C. S. Barlow, Engelhard, Hagart, Richdale, Stratten and Wilson join the Rand Mines board), 6 December 1957 (Walker relinquishes the managing directorship), Annual Review May 1958 (Frames retires; Engelhard chairman "only until the end of 1959"). Economist, 1 September 1956 (assets £4 15s a share; not in Klerksdorp; only Harmony in the Free State), 9 February 1957 ("personalities"), 16 March 1957 ("a lure likely to attract share bidders"), 25 May and 1 June 1957 ("the most gentlemanly takeover on record"), 9 August 1958 ("this staid mining finance house"). Lord Baillieu's statements to the annual meetings of 31 May 1956 and 13 August 1957 (the head office "6,000 miles away in London"; net assets £13.4m at book, £23m at market). Anglo American Corporation annual reports 1970, 1971 (p. 65) and 1972 (Engelhard's death; the scheme terms; Charter's exchange and sale). Financial Times, 29 July 1971 (the reconstituted boards; the five Rand Mines directors who resigned). Michael Cardo, Harry Oppenheimer (2023) (Punch's 1960 proposal; Oppenheimer to Engelhard, "startling" and "might be very acceptable", Brenthurst Library; "wartime housemates"; "a fruitful deal for Anglo"; net profit R53.9m by 1974). Ruth First, The South African Connection (1972), p. 362 (P. H. Anderson chairman of Rand Mines).Economist, 25 May, 1 June and 8 June 1957 (Sam Glazer at the Savoy; £5 a share for two-thirds of Central Mining's ordinaries against a price of 64s 6d; the syndicate's 80 per cent of the preference shares at 24s; the voting weights and the unissued five million shares, "could easily turn a majority into a minority"; "Mr Glazer's opportunity, if he ever had one, seems to have passed"; Rand American Investments' £3m and $10m; Engelhard chairman, Stratten managing director). Mining Journal, 31 May 1957, p. 696 ("An Attempt To Corner The 'Corner House'"). Mining World, February 1958 (C. S. Barlow and C. W. Engelhard to the Rand Mines board). Commercial & Financial Chronicle, 18 September 1958 (Charles S. Barlow managing director of American-South African Investment Co., director of Standard Bank and Syfrets). A. P. Cartwright, The Golden Age (1968), pp. 321–23 (the Glazers; the Rand American Investments board). Financial Times, 13 November 1971, p. 16 (Barlow Rand's results notice: 63,639,000 and 84,039,000 shares; 20,400,000 allotted for Rand Mines). International Directory of Company Histories, vol. 1 (1988), pp. 422–23 ("the largest takeover in South African history"; SAB's 22 per cent). R. Davies, D. O'Meara and S. Dlamini, The Struggle for South Africa (1984), vol. 1, p. 76 (SA Mutual 5.2 per cent and Anglo 12.7 per cent before April 1982; the Mutual to 23 per cent). Mendel Kaplan, Jewish Roots in the South African Economy (1986), p. 223 ("effective control of Barlow Rand"). Anthony Hocking, Oppenheimer and Son (1973), pp. 440–41 ("a family business which eventually gained administrative control of the Rand Mines group"; the racehorse). Optima, October 1993, p. 19 (Vergelegen's R22m). South African Panorama, vol. 23 (1956), p. 19 (Punch on the "close friendship" with Anglo through Harry Oppenheimer). Michael Cardo, Harry Oppenheimer: Diamonds, Gold and Dynasty (2023) (the Barlows among Harry's friends in the 1930s) and Opening Men's Eyes (2012) (the Barlows' house next door to Eric Gallo).Anne Coomes. African Harvest: the captivating story of Michael Cassidy and African Enterprise (Monarch, 2002): Tom Barlow's conversion at Cambridge in 1956, the polo ponies sold in 1959 to pay Cassidy's passage to Fuller Seminary, his testimony at a later service. De Zandvoortse Courant and Zandvoorts Nieuwsblad, 1965 ("zendeling Tom Barlow van de Dorothea-zending"). Michael Cardo. Opening Men's Eyes: Peter Brown and the Liberal Struggle for South Africa (Jonathan Ball, 2012): Eric Gallo "and his wife, Kay. Punch would eventually divorce Cynthia and marry Kay, while Cynthia set up home at Vergelegen". Annabi Postma. Governor or Robber Baron? The Story of Vergelegen (1996), p. 30 (Tom took charge of the farm in 1966; Anglo American Farms bought it in October 1987). Bosch Hoek histories (boschhoek.co.za; Compleat Golfer): the farm bought in 1951 and passed on Punch's death to "his stepson, Peter Gallo (who had married Barlow's daughter)". David Brown. All the World Was His Stage (2000) ("Tom Barlow who will inherit all of this"). Dictionary of South African Biography, vol. 5, entry by M. Fraser (dates; the eulogy and memorial booklet cited). Stephen Cranston, Business Day, 15 May 2025 (Rand Mines "the smallest and definitely weakest of the Big Six"; the purchase that "nearly sunk them"). Miningmx on Roger Kebble and the 1994 Randgold bid (Mercury Asset Management; "death with dignity"); Harmony Gold presentation, May 2007 (market capitalisation R45bn at 30 April 2007); Harmony "on the edge of closure in 1995" (Harmony corporate history as cited in the Rand Mines fact file).Barsab Investment Trust, 1966 to 1976. Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, Annual Report 1966 (South African Breweries entry: the share exchange with Thos. Barlow & Sons of August 1966 and the formation of Barsab Investment Trust (Proprietary) Limited; SAB's 11,219,631 shares of R2); Annual Report 1970 (Ameshoff Street Investments, owned jointly by SAB and Barlows, the holding company of Barsab; footwear, paints and aircraft distribution; "a substantial shareholding in South African Breweries and Thos. Barlow & Sons"); Annual Report 1972 (the scheme approved by Barsab's members in December 1972; SAB's 24 per cent of Afcol, Shoe Corporation of Africa and Barker, Chissick Footwear; Barsab retains the SAB and Barlow Rand shares, Placo and 35 per cent of Metropolitan Board of Executors; SAB's 139,112,798 shares of 20 cents). archive.org, Angl2873_1966, Angl2873_1970, Angl2873_1972. House of Commons, Hansard, 22 July 1968, South African Breweries Bill (SAB's 1967 report: Barlows and SAB "each hold a 50 per cent. interest" in Barsab). Financial Times, 18 November 1975 (SAB and Stellenbosch Wine Trust joint announcement of 11 November: 38,856,116 new SAB shares and 11,088,891 from Barsab); 22 January 1976 (Barlow Rand's circular: the Ameshoff group's 6,470,649 Barlow Rand and 11,088,891 SAB shares; the payment to SAB "in the order of R2,000,000"; the offer to shareholders of 7 shares per 100 at 225 cents); 23 January 1976, Richard Rolfe, "Barsab winding up operation" (the purpose of the trust; 700 cents in 1969 and delisting at 35 cents; R14.5m raised, R12.5m net; short-term borrowings of R34m; debt to equity from 58 to 53 per cent; the market price of 315 cents; 98.6m shares in issue); 6 November 1979 (Plascon-Evans a 73 per cent subsidiary of Barlow Rand). International Directory of Company Histories, vol. 1 (1988), pp. 288–89 (Sceales and Barsab; the 1972 dissolution) and pp. 422–23 (R12 million of stock; 22 per cent of Barlow). Mendel Kaplan, Jewish Roots in the South African Economy (1986) (Afcol taken over by Barsab in 1972; "the consumer goods part of Barsab went to S.A. Breweries"). The 8, 6.6 and 4 per cent, the R14.6 million, the R5.8 million and the 29 per cent are the author's arithmetic from these figures.The gold house, 1993 and 1994. Financial Times, 14 January 1993 (Rand Mines and Randcoal announcement: a dividend in specie of 63 Rand Mines Properties, 200 Randgold & Exploration and 100 PGM Investments shares per 100 Rand Mines shares, record date 29 January 1993; Randgold listed on the Johannesburg exchange on 1 February 1993); 19 January 1993, "Barlow Rand plans stock distribution" (22.2m Randgold shares; six per 100 Barlow Rand shares; the interest kept at about 35 per cent); 26 January 1993 (Randgold "the gold arm of the Barlow Rand group"); 25 January 1994, p. 25, Matthew Curtin, "Barlow to sell remaining stake in Randgold" (the remaining 27 per cent by tender, "worth nearly R80m ($23.5m)"; Mercury Asset Management's holding; Clewlow at the annual meeting); 19 August 1994, Mark Suzman, "Group of investors takes control of Randgold board", and Randgold's notice of the same day (29,820,610 shares in issue; eleven directors elected by three to one; Randgold at R8.50); 12 August 1994, Randgold & Exploration's letter to shareholders of 11 August 1994 (the proposed transaction at 725 cents a Randgold share; the share at 900 cents when it was announced; cash and near cash of 348 cents a share at 30 June 1994 and listed securities of 997 cents a share at current prices). Miningmx, 11 October 2010, "Randgold in R310m gold shares payout" (3.161 Gold Fields shares per 100 and a special dividend of 90 cents; R310m, 432 cents a share). Randgold & Exploration Company, Form 20-F for 2003 (43,696,256 shares in issue at 31 December 2002; Randgold Resources' issued capital from 29,273,685 to 58,547,370 shares on the split effective 11 June 2004). Randgold & Exploration, results of the annual general meetings of 2023 and 2025 (74,585,065 shares in issue, of which 2,999,893 treasury shares: 71,585,172 outstanding). The 74, 39 and 8 per cent, R9.93 a share, R104 million, R117 million, R220 million, R300 million, R15.8 billion, R14.1 billion, R96 billion, R1,346, R30 billion, R8,100, R59.7 billion and R90 billion are the author's arithmetic from these figures, the ledger in Appendix A and the closes of 13 November 2026.THE CHIEF EXECUTIVES, 1999 TO 2025Barloworld Limited. Annual financial statements 2020, directors' report (18,245,058 shares repurchased and cancelled; 6,578,121 issued to the Barloworld Empowerment Foundation) and company statement of cash flows (buy-back R1,562m), giving R85.61 a share; annual financial statements 2023 (10,608,119 shares repurchased in 2022 at an average of R95.38); annual financial statements 2020, note 38 (Wagner Asia: consideration transferred R3,038m including a US$45m premium, paid from cash on 1 September 2020; net assets R2,718m; goodwill R328m; earn-out of up to US$30m; Ingrain: initial price R4,536m and contingent consideration R450m at 30 September 2020). Joint firm intention announcement, 11 December 2024, paras 7.4.4–7.4.5 (the deemed vesting percentages and the split between accelerated and later-vesting awards). Results of the annual general meeting, 21 February 2025 (78.24 and 78.53 per cent). Competition Tribunal, 15 August 2025 (approval subject to employment and ownership conditions). World Gold Council, The Bretton Woods System; Foreign Relations of the United States 1969–76, vol. XXVIII, doc. 22 (the two-tier gold market from March 1968).Barloworld Limited. Annual Report 1999 (Phillips chief executive 1 August 1999; value-based management; the 8% real cash-flow return hurdle); Annual Reports 2002–2006 (cash-flow return 6.7% in 2000 to 12.3% in 2006; the 2002 target to double value in four years; year-end prices 2,940c in 1999 and 12,950c in 2006; headline earnings 320c to 1,171c; dividends; Phillips, 2006: "We are not portfolio traders, but rather try to build a core of businesses"; R7.6bn sold and R6.8bn bought since 1999; real total shareholder return 132%); Annual Report 2003, corporate governance ("Mr WAM Clewlow who is father-in-law to the finance director, Mr CB Thomson"; Thomson's appointment as finance director 1 April 2003; Clewlow's roles: board 1974, chief executive 1985, chairman 1991); Annual Report 2007 (Thomson chief executive 18 December 2006; Clewlow chairman 1991–2006; "embarked on an exciting new course"; total shareholder return 79%). Results announcements, 20 November 2006 (the independent review of structure announced by Clewlow), 20 December 2006 (PPC unbundling and Phillips's retirement, as reported by CemNet), 19 November 2007 and 21 November 2016 (headline earnings 811.7c and 838c; return on shareholders' funds 9.2%). Avis Southern Africa offer, 20 November 2003 (R12.70 a share; R1.42bn for 65.3%). Financial Mail, 25 August 2016 ("seed, grow and harvest"); Engineering News, 10 March 2017 ("Companies survive with cash flows, not with profits"). Woolworths Holdings and Vodacom board announcements, 2019 and 2020.Ingrain: Barloworld and Tongaat Hulett, joint announcement, 28 February 2020 ("a highly cash generative, relatively asset light, defensive investment"; enterprise value R5.350bn; EBITDA R777m for the year to March 2019 and R303m for the six months to September 2019); Business Day, 2 March 2020 (Hudson: "a compelling offer"; Tongaat's R8.1bn debt-reduction undertaking) and 12 May 2020 ("Barloworld wants out": the 17.5% projected fall; McCurrie); Business Report, 13 May 2020 (Hudson: "we do not believe that an MAC has occurred"); Financial Mail, 21 May 2020 (Hudson: "If you shake my hand, we've done a deal"); Fin24, 5 June 2020 (von Zeuner: "an asset that performs well"); Engineering News, 17 August 2020 (Rothschild & Co appointed) and 2 November 2020 (completion); Business Day, 22 September 2020 (the ruling); Engineering News, 30 November 2020 (Sewela: "we don't want to be a conglomerate akin to the old Barloworld"); The Citizen, 2 February 2021 ("a bit of a hotch-potch"; "I just can't see a strategy"); Business Day, 27 March 2024 (the section 189 process at Ingrain); results call, 25 November 2024 (Sewela: "Ingrain performs better than our thesis at acquisition"). The multiples of 6.9 and 8.8 times EBITDA are the author's arithmetic on the announcement's figures.The conflict: joint firm intention announcement, 11 December 2024, para. 1.6 (the chief executive's protocol; the steering committee of "select unconflicted executives"); Business Day, 23 December 2024 (Mhlarhi: Sewela "recused from all Barloworld-related issues on the proposed transaction"); Business Report, 28 February 2025 (the independent board's statement); Financial Mail, 5 and 10 February 2025 (Crotty: Silchester on fiduciary responsibilities; "Why Barloworld's CEO should be benched"); Billionaires.Africa, 10 February 2025 (Linehan: "The independent board has failed in its fiduciary duty"); Engineering News, 10 March 2025 (Sfeir: "we wanted the CEO to be able to continue to take care of operations"); SENS, 13 June 2025 (the pledge of 1,200,000 shares, R129.5m); Companies Regulations 2011, regs 108(2), (3), (6), (8), (9) and 110. Barlow Park ownership: Engineering News, 2 and 10 June 2022 (Atterbury, Divercity, Moolman Group, Twin City); Absa CIB, "Making Africa's richest square mile more accessible" (the lender); Divercity launch, 2018 (Atterbury, Ithemba, RMH Property, Nedbank Property Partners); Property Flash, September 2025 (RMH about 30% of Atterbury); PIC and Divercity, 23 January 2025; Barloworld annual financial statements 2022 (p. 121), 2023 (p. 118), 2024 (p. 111) and 2025 (p. 110), related parties.BARLOW PARK: FURTHER SOURCESAfrican Rainbow Capital Investments. Results for the year to 30 June 2019 (Barlo Park, unlisted, 33.3%, under Other Property), interim results December 2019, 2020 and 2021 (the holding listed), and results for the year to 30 June 2022, p. 10 ("Barlopark was sold during the year for a consideration of R25 million"). Barloworld Limited. Results for the year to 30 September 2017 ("good progress ... on the project for the redevelopment of the Barlow Park property"), interim results of 21 May 2018 ("the disposal of Barlow Park with a 1 April 2019 scheduled handover"), results for the year to 30 September 2018, note 6 ("in the process of being sold into a consortium of investors"; "confident that this sale will take place in 2019"), results for 2020 ("being reassessed in line with current market conditions"; the R167m impairment relating to Equipment southern Africa's properties). Khula Sizwe firm intention announcement, 19 November 2018 (portfolio value R2,755m; 293,823 m² of lettable area; the 5% discount). Sunday Times, 2 November 2025, and FSACCI, 5 April 2024 (the Kgoro site: R280m in 2008; valued at R800m in 2024). Bizcommunity, 26 July 2018 (Divercity's founding shareholders) and 7 March 2024 (phase one let; the retail opening); BusinessTech, 23 January 2025 (the PIC's investment in Divercity); RLB, Global Annual Report 2025 (phases 1–3, 120,000 m²).THE LONG LEDGER, 1990 TO 2026Financial Times, 28 September 1990 (World Stock Markets, South Africa, 27 September: Barlow Rand R33.25) and 16 November 1990 (the same table, 15 November: Barlow Rand R33.00); 29 September 1990 (the Johannesburg report for 28 September: the all-share index down 51 to 2,744, so 2,795 on 27 September); 22 May 1990 ("Barlow Rand hit by S African slowdown": the interim maintained at 51c); 13 November 1990 (the 1990 dividend maintained at 170c); 12 November 1991 ("Barlow Rand better than expected": the dividend maintained at 170c, the final offered in cash or shares for the first time); 17 November 1992 ("Barlow Rand hit by falling economy": the dividend raised 2 per cent to 173c from 170c; earnings 438c against 431c); 16 November 1993 (173c). All read in the archive.org full-text copies.CG Smith Limited: Financial Times, 17 November 1994 ("SA foods group lifts payout": the dividend raised to 36.8c from 32.7c; earnings 106c) and 24 November 1995 ("CG Smith ahead 33% for year": the dividend lifted from 36.8c to 48c; earnings 137.4c); Business Report, 26 November 1998 (the final of 45c for a full-year payout of 67c; headline earnings 186.8c) and 19 November 1999 (the final of 55c for a full-year payout of 80c; the stakes in Tiger, Nampak and Illovo). Reunert Limited: Financial Times, 10 November 1994 (the 1994 dividend of 27c against 23.4c); Annual Report 2000, p. 34 (the five-year summary: dividends 1996–2000 of 36, 36, 43, 58 and 76c; the special of 250c paid October 1999); Annual Report 2001, p. 36; Annual Report 2005, p. 34 (2002–2005); Annual Report 2010, pp. 10–11 (2006–2010 and the special of 200c of August 2006); Annual Report 2015, pp. 116–117 (2011–2015); results announcements 2016–2025; interim results of 22 May 2026 (dividend No. 200, 90c).Tiger Brands Limited: Annual Report 2004, p. 81 (dividends 2000–2004); Annual Report 2009, p. 86 (2005–2009, including the capital distributions of 2007–2009); Annual Report 2014, p. 56 (2010–2014); Annual Report 2015, p. 43; Integrated Report 2019, p. 19 and Annual Report 2020, p. 41 (2019 and 2020, including the special of 306c); results announcements 2021–2025 and of 1 June 2026 (interim 430c). Astral Foods Limited: Annual Report 2006, p. 26 (2001–2006); Annual Report 2010, p. 31 (2007–2010); Annual Report 2015, p. 35 (2011–2015); Annual Report 2020, p. 32 (2016–2020); Integrated Report 2025, p. 138 (2017–2025, nil in 2023); interim results of 18 May 2026 (1,160c). The Spar Group Limited: Annual Report 2009, p. 33 (2005–2009); Integrated Report 2014, p. 52 (2010–2014); Integrated Report 2019, p. 29 (2015–2019); Integrated Report 2021, p. 38 and Integrated Report 2022, p. 35 (2020–2022); Integrated Reports 2023, 2024 and 2025 (no dividend); interim results of 10 June 2026 (no interim dividend). Adcock Ingram Holdings Limited: Annual Report 2009, p. 3 (2009); Annual Reports 2010–2013 (the dividend note in each); Integrated Reports 2014, 2016, 2017 and 2018 (the distribution note in each); results announcements of 21 February and 28 August 2019, 20 February and 26 August 2020 (no final), 24 February and 25 August 2021, 23 February and 25 August 2022, 21 February and 23 August 2023, 21 February and 22 August 2024, 20 February and 22 August 2025. Oceana Group Limited: Integrated Report 2020, pp. 83–84 (2016–2020); Integrated Report 2023, p. 105; Integrated Report 2024, p. 109; Integrated Report 2025, p. 110; interim results of 21 May 2026 (110c). Illovo Sugar Limited: Annual Report 2001, p. 33 (1995–2001); Annual Report 2006, p. 37 (2002–2006); Annual Report 2011, p. 74 (2007–2011); Annual Report 2015, p. 30 (2012–2015); interim report of 30 November 2015 and preliminary report of 3 June 2016 (no distribution for 2016). Nampak Limited: Annual Report 2004, p. 49; results of 2005–2013; Integrated Report 2016, p. 44 (the five-year review: 2012–2016, nil in 2016); the shareholders' diary in each Integrated Report 2017 to 2025 ("No dividend being paid"). Barloworld Limited: Annual Report 2006, p. 9 (dividends 2000–2006); Annual Report 2007 to the annual financial statements 2025 as cited in Appendix B. Business Report, 7 September 1998 (Ingwe: no year-end dividend before Billiton's buy-out). PPC, Freeworld and Zeda as cited under the 1997 ledger above. The rate of return is the author's arithmetic on the dated receipts in the ledger; the index yields are those in Barloworld's Annual Reports 2007 and 2009, pp. 174–175 and 116–117.MARKET DATAYahoo Finance, closes of Friday 13 November 2026, read on 14 November 2026 through the author's browser: Tiger Brands R265.84 (market value R38.8bn); PPC R8.35 (R12.3bn); Reunert R50.00 (R7.9bn); Nampak R534.50 (R4.5bn); Zeda R16.15 (R3.0bn); Astral R192.53 (R8.0bn); Harmony R259.72 (R162.9bn); DRDGOLD R39.59 (R34.4bn); Spar R46.70 (R9.0bn); Oceana R70.23 (R8.4bn); South32 R51.15 (R229bn); Barrick Mining US$37.59 (NYSE: B); Bidvest R248.60 (R84.5bn); Bid Corporation R460.46 (R153.9bn); Remgro R212.86 (R118.5bn); Caterpillar US$600.20; USD/ZAR 16.92; Comex gold front-month close US$3,886.30; JSE All Share 112,387.9.LBMA gold fixes and the South African Reserve Bank exchange rates for the historical dates stated in the text, as approximations where the text says "about".Northbound Research. "A Diamond Is Forever. De Beers Was Not." Research Exposé, November 2026 (the De Beers record used in Section XVI).

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