SA’s record takeover – Jooste and Wiese put seal on three decade friendship

By Alec Hogg

In business, one occasionally meets someone you just know is going to be super-successful. Saul Goldstein, fresh out of school, was our very first sales rep at Moneyweb circa 1998. Saul helped us a great deal but we were always going to be too small for his ambition. Today he has a multinational business, dominating the VAT reclaim sector globally.

Another of these special talents was yesterday’s headliner Markus Jooste. We met well over a decade back through a mutual love for thoroughbreds. It surprised me that the investment community took so long to appreciate his brilliance, but that all changed 18 months ago. After bumping along for a decade and a half since its 1998 listing, Steinhoff shares suddenly started becoming hot property, doubling in value and positioning the group for July’s massive R18bn rights issue ahead of moving its primary listing to the Frankfurt stock exchange.

Jooste added another notch to his impressive record yesterday when announcing the biggest corporate takeover in South African history. Steinhoff’s R63bn acquisition of Christo Wiese’s Pepkor has another interesting result. It closes the circle on a relationship that began in 1982 when Jooste did his first audit at Wiese’s company. Which goes to show. You never know where today’s small engagement might end.


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