Fighting an existential threat: CEO Gerrie Fourie on Capitec’s defence against Viceroy

This is the Rational Perspective. I'm Alec Hogg.

Well, in December 2017, a previously unknown operation called Viceroy Research shot to prominence with a scathing report on Steinhoff when they put it into the public domain. The allegations made by Viceroy in that report accelerated the demise of what was then the world's second-largest furniture group. It provided fresh impetus to a panic that had erupted among investors when auditors, Deloitte, refused to sign off the 2017 financial years account. As a direct result, Steinhoff's CEO, Markus Jooste, resigned.

A month later the suddenly famous Viceroy turned its attention onto Capitec, South African banking disruptive force whose stock price had peaked at just under R1 100 per share in December having come from R33 a decade before. After the report was released, Capitec's share price dropped 21% in just 2 days. Over the weekend I met with Capitec's CEO, Gerrie Fourie, who was passing through London on his way home after a week's holiday. What transpired was a lesson in how to successfully manage crisis communications and a reminder that to do so require total attention from the very top. But let's start the story at the beginning. I asked Gerrie, was there any advance warning?

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