Something in SA’s water that grows great entrepreneurs?
By Alec Hogg
I bumped into Mike de Kock over the weekend, a reminder of the impact South Africans make around the world. De Kock is a racehorse trainer revered in Dubai, the UK and pretty much everywhere a horse is sent to post. Starting from a zero base, he has risen to the pinnacle of his industry through sheer talent.
If anything, SA's entrepreneurs are doing even better. This week's London Sunday Times ran a story about Mick Davis, one-time financial director of Eskom (in his 20s) who last year sold his creation Xstrata to Glencore for almost R300bn. Supportive UK investors have entrusted Davis with R50bn in fresh capital for his new company X2 Resources. The newspaper is now tipping the 56 year old South African to take over Anglo American.
An even bigger resources fish is Glencore, whose biggest shareholder and CEO is Johannesburg-born and raised Ivan Glasenberg. And hardly a week passes without news of further progress on the global stage by other SA entrepreneurs like US-based Elon Musk; Stephen Saad of Aspen; Markus Jooste of Steinhoff; Bidvest's Brian Joffe; and the Investec duo of Stephen Koseff and Bernard Kantor. You have to wonder whether there's something in our water. If so, maybe we could bottle some for the politicians?
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