Classic Business

Gasant Orrie, Cape managing partner and director of the corporate and commercial practice at Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr

The widely anticipated remote working drive has potentially far reaching implications for the Property Market, not only for offices but for other property sectors too. In the near term, though, there will be more questions than answers surrounding this potential trend. While many corporate CEOs appear to be planning for greater levels of remote work, as yet the pace and magnitude of the remote working trend is difficult to determine.

While many companies may have embraced remote work because they were forced to, the true extent of this enthusiasm for remote work from management teams and employees alike will only become clearer once the COVID-19 Crisis has passed and office buildings are 100% open once more. Nevertheless, significant enthusiasm for the concept should be expected, given the success of the Lockdown remote working “experiment”, and asking the relevant questions as to the impacts of such a trend is thus important. Cobie Legrange caught up with John Loos, property sector strategist at FNB Commercial Property Finance to look at the emerging patterns in the property space

Jake Willis, CEO and co-founder of Lulaway

Karim Chedid, Investment strategist at BlackRock

The South African domestic flight travel industry has seen a tremendous change – with forecasted profit margins dropping at alarming rates given the lockdown restrictions, and the likes of Comair going into business rescue, despite performing fairly well over the past couple of years. If the aviation industry is so tough, globally and constrained locally, the question is, why would former Kulula founder Gidon Novick, develop a new domestic airline in 2020. Planned to take to its first flights between the Johannesburg and Cape in December 2020, the new airline is deemed to take a high-tech Uber like operating model geared at introducing more tech domestic travel. Cobie Legrange talked to Gidon Novick, founder of Lucid Ventures, about the strategic rationale and wisdom of launching a new airline in the Covid-19 era, which has brought airline, hospitality and related industries to a virtual halt.

Wayne McCurrie, portfolio manager, FNB Wealth and Investments & Steven Schultz, CEO of Momentum Securities

Emile Du Toit, MD: fund raising and liabilities management at Harith General Partners; Ndabe Mkhize, CIO of the Eskom Pension and Provident Fund & Heleen Goussard, head of alternative investment services at RisCura

If we’re serious about growing the economy, we need to start seeing more venture capital money backing more investable ideas the same way it is done in the US and Israel. That’s why the release of the recent SAVCA Venture Capital Survey is so interesting. It shows that we’re starting to see a rise in VC investments, off a low but steadily rising base, and, perhaps more importantly, the local VC landscape experienced record investment & exit activity in 2019. Michael Avery speaks to SAVCA CEO Tanya van Lill,; Stephan Lamprecht, the MD of Venture Solutions, a VC consultancy; and Andrea Böhmert, Co-Managing Partner at Knife Capital, about the rise of VC and what impact Covid has had on the asset class.

Sharon Smulders, project director: Tax Advocacy at SAICA

Thoneshan Naidoo, principal officer for Medshield Medical Scheme