Koos Bekker’s next re-invention – FT

It is all systems go for the listing of Prosus; the international assets of Naspers on the Amsterdam stock exchange next week. It is estimated that Prosus, which will include Naspers' 31% stake in Chinese company Tencent should be valued at around $100bn. With the Amsterdam listing, the dominance of Naspers over the South African stock market is about to be reduced which Bloomberg regards as good news for a number of fund managers who are concerned about the tech giant's weighting in the main local index. The remarkable success of Naspers reads like a business fairy tale; Koos Bekker's single bet on a Chinese start-up company meant that Naspers could grow to mammoth proportions. As one analyst described it; Koos "threw a handful of spaghetti against the wall and while most pieces didn't stick, one of the big fat pieces did stick." Bekker has been described by journalists that have interviewed him as quiet. He is not an easy man to get an interview with and does not seem to like too much publicity unless you manage to track him down at Davos in Switzerland, like Alec Hogg did this year. The South African tech king as he has been described by the Financial Times is about to get a lot more publicity as he re-invents Naspers and hopes to turn it into an even bigger global success story. – Linda van  Tilburg

By Thulasizwe Sithole

Next week Naspers will list its global internet empire in Amsterdam. The company's former chief executive and chairman, Koos Bekker and his bet on Chinese company, Tencent, seen as "the world's most successful" is likely to become the stuff of business legends. With a single bet of $32m in 2011 on Tencent; the company grew to $133bn and as it had outgrown the South African stock market; it is now ready for a European listing.

The Financial Times likens Bekker's success to that of Richard II, saying, "it began with failure." Earlier investments in Chinese start-ups did not succeed as Koos described it to journalist David Rowan, "we sat upon the floor and told sad stories of the death of kings." But his fortune changed when he spotted the Shenzhen start-up that dominated China's internet.

Rowan writes that Bekker had changed the destiny of the company on a previous occasion. When he joined Naspers in 1985, "it was seen in the business of selling hate for 70 years." Naspers newspapers, Beeld, Burger and Volksblad were seen to be the official propaganda arm of the National Party. The vision and direction of Naspers was changed because of Koos' bold move to bring subscription television to South Africa.

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