🔒 Flash Briefing: Naspers spends big in Russia; Brexit hits London houses hard; Stanford world’s top MBA

By Alec Hogg

• Turnover in the London housing market has fallen to its lowest level since the Global Financial Crisis ten years ago. Lonres, a data network connecting 6,000 London property professionals, says there has been a drop of one fifth in stock coming onto the market in prime districts. Owners who actually selling have had to accept an average of 11% less for their homes. Real estate agency Savills forecasts London will be hardest hit by Brexit, forecasting total net growth in house prices over the next five years at a miserable 7%.

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• The world’s largest iron ore producer, Brazilian group Vale, is in the global headlines today after the biggest mining disaster in more than 50 years. The wall of a slimes dam that was the height of a 28-story skyscraper, collapsed over the weekend unleashing a tidal wave of mud and waste. There are 58 confirmed deaths with another 300 people still unaccounted for. This is the second recent disaster involving Vale following a similar collapse of a dam in 2015 which killed 19 and cost the Brazilian company and its partner in Bento Rodrigues, BHP Billiton, $1.5bn in compensation payments. This weekend’s disaster in the state of Minas Gerais is set to become the second biggest mining disaster on record, surpassed only by a 1966 dam collapse in Bulgaria which claimed 488 lives. Vale’s share price is projected to open 8% lower when trading begins later today.
• California’s Stanford’s Graduate School of Business has topped the world’s best MBA list for the second successive year, shading its east coast rival Harvard. The annual MBA rankings released this morning by the Financial Times of London has seven American institutions in the global top 10. Only France’s Insead, China’s CEIBs and the London Business School prevented a clean sweep. US schools dominate the Top 100 MBA school list at 51 spots, with the UK’s 11 the only other country in double figures. No African business school makes the top 100 this year.
• In South African related news, the Naspers share price opened fractionally lower this morning after Friday evening’s announcement it had paid more than a billion dollars to buy the 27% it did not already own in Russian company Avito. The deal, which values now wholly owned Avito at almost $4bn, was done by Naspers’s online classified advertising arm OLX. It has been invested in the Russian market leader since 2013. Avito, which dominates Russian classified advertising in Goods, Jobs, Real Estate, Services and Cars, is growing revenues at over 30% at what Naspers calls robust profit margins.