Classic Business

Nicole Smalberger, senior associate and trademark attorney at Adams and Adams

Nkanyiso Gumede, researcher at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies at the University of Western Cape

Charl Bester, wealth & portfolio manager at Kruger International

& Simon Brown, founder of Just One Lap

In this weekly feature Michael Avery gets up close and personal with South Africa’s business and political economy leaders, to uncover what makes them tick, keeps them up at night and keeps them going through the Covid storm. Michael Avery’s guest this week has made his way through FirstRand group to become the CEO of one of the largest listed REITS in the country. As Chief Risk Officer at WesBank, he was the Head of Credit for FNB Corporate Property Finance, and also as Credit Risk Manager at both BoE Bank Limited and Nedbank Limited and he was a Director at Loubser du Plessis Consulting Proprietary Limited. He is now CEO of Attacq, The company, which owns the 131,000m² Mall of Africa, the largest shopping mall yet built in a single phase in SA, and developer of Waterfall City. But Attacq also has exposure to neighbourhood and convenience shopping centres which helped to soften the crashing fall Attacq took in the second half of its financial year, in which the landlord saw its assets lose R1.7bn, or 8.6%, in value. Melt Hamman, shares his plans to navigate through a brutally tough time in REIT land.

Warwick Lucas, CIO of Galileo Asset Management & Prof Raymond Parsons, from School of Business and Governance at North West University

Brian McMillan, head of structured products at Investec Corporate & Institutional Banking; Darryl Hannington, portfolio manager at Anchor Capital & Melissa Dyer, managing director at Harbour Wealth

At the Morningstar Investment Conference 2020 Michael Avery heard that total investments with a focus on (ESG) principles are estimated at US$30 trillion. That equates to 1 of every 3 investment dollars. ESG principles have been adopted to some extent by 86% of S&P 500 companies. And the pressure on companies to adopt these practices has increased by the likelihood of new regulation becoming the new reality.Victoria Reuvers, Managing Director of Morningstar Investment Management South Africa, shares her view on ESG in SA.

Mitch Adams, head of research & development and co-founder of Ozow digital payments company

Communications regulator Icasa has finally invited mobile operators to apply to bid for spectrum for 4G and next-generation 5G networks from 02 October, with the country’s first-ever auctions expected to take place by the end of March 2021. Allocation of frequency bands for wireless communication is seen as key to expanding broadband services, especially 5G in South Africa, where the high cost of telecommunications is a barrier to doing business.To bid for all spectrum bands available, the total reserve price is set at R2.65bn, which is below the R3bn reserve price announced in 2016. These numbers are not directly comparable, given the spectrum slots announced are significantly different to those announced in the original 2016 ITA. Good news for the operators is that 4 slots in the valuable 700Mhz/800Mhz will be available (albeit only 2x5Mhz slots), which most likely reduces pricing tension given only 4 MNOs in operation (although they could face competition from other ISPs/wholesale operators). Arthur Goldstuck MD of World Wide Worx, explains to Michael Avery how it all comes together.

William Gumede, Associate Professor, School of Governance at Wits & author of Restless Nation: Making Sense of Troubled Time