LATEST ON BIZNEWS RADIO: Arrie Rautenbach: Six months after taking hot seat, Absa’s through-the-ranks CEO explains why “reimagined” bank is outperforming peers (For Spotify, click here)
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Emotion is the enemy of investing. Arguments around the ultimate investment for skilled South Africans (stay or go) is awash with it. Given the last 28 years, SA’s high crime rate and economic stagnation, that’s not surprising. But beacons of hope are emerging. Mainly because a window of reality is at last being observed among the wider populace.
For instance, SA’s long-moribund Special Investigations Unit hasn’t suddenly found a new gear. Rather, the SIU’s newfound successes come via its receipt of slam-dunk evidence documenting corrupt practices by deployed cadres. Courtesy of rudely awakened and now very ‘gatvol’ staff at heavily abused State-owned enterprises.
Ditto in Pretoria after a forced abandonment of the ANC’s command-and-control fantasy. Take electricity. This week Anglo American and France’s EDF confirmed go-ahead for a previously illegal project to soon deliver 600MW of renewable power. Richards Bay Minerals and another French multinational, Voltalia, yesterday announced a 300MW project.
Those are the green shoots a revolution that is ending Eskom’s monopoly and with it the ANC’s spectacularly plundered slush fund. The dam has finally broken after years of artificial blockages constructed by a political elite driven by self-enrichment. The ingenuity of SA’s inventive private sector is finally being unleashed. Hope springs. For any rational mind.
Investors in banking stocks ask first about the prospects of the country where the institution operates, then about the company itself. Having just arrived back home from a post-results roadshow to US and UK investors, FirstRand CEO Alan Pullinger has been thinking a lot about their questions around the likely future for the SA economy. His conclusions – positive results of economic reforms; optimism about the country’s latent potential – may come as a surprise for many of his fellow citizens. Rational, insightful and balanced, Pullinger delivers hope without varnishing reality.
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