Category: News
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Carson Block, founder of Muddy Waters Research: If you thought the GFC was bad…
Short-seller Carson Block warns that AI-driven job losses among highly paid knowledge workers will turn retirement fund inflows negative, triggering passive-fund outflows that hit AI mega-caps hardest, potentially sparking a financial crisis larger than 2007-09. For South African readers, the piece is a reminder of how exposed local retirement funds and unit trusts with offshore…
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Cathy Buckle: Zim’s icy July – mass deportations and a Constitutional coup
Cathy Buckle’s latest letter from Zimbabwe captures a nation on edge. As an unusual cold snap grips the country, President Mnangagwa has quietly signed sweeping Constitutional Amendments into law without a public referendum — scrapping direct presidential elections, extending terms to seven years, and centralizing power over the judiciary and electoral bodies. The changes have…
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Ivo Vegter: Activists cast SA’s data centre boom as a monster to slay
Writing for the Daily Friend, columnist Ivo Vegter takes aim at Daily Maverick’s “Power Guzzlers” coverage and a Foxglove-backed objection to a Cape Town Equinix data centre, arguing that activists are conflating zoning applications with licensing processes to obstruct investment South Africa badly needs. He points to Actom, Hitachi Energy and Eskom’s transmission build-out as…
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FT’s Gillian Tett: Markets are shrugging off a Russia-China plan to disable Starlink satellites
Gillian Tett of the Financial Times warns that investors piling into SpaceX and hyperscalers are largely ignoring reports of a secret Russo-Chinese effort to develop tools to disable Starlink and other American satellites, even as bullish analyst calls continue. With Starlink both a Ukraine war lifeline and, per Elon Musk’s South African roots, a company…
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BN Daybreak: Amazon beats Starlink; PIC’s Lanseria crisis; Netflix’s slowdown; AI’s big margins
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak we dive into Amazon’s quiet maneuver past Starlink into South Africa’s satellite internet market via Herotel. We also examine the Public Investment Corporation’s escalating governance crisis over the Lanseria Airport transaction, alongside policing gaps fueling local pharmaceutical drug crimes. Internationally, we cover SpaceX’s scrubbed Starship launch, Netflix’s disappointing sales…
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Director’s Cut — Dr Mark Burke: What is behind the governance crisis at the R3.5 trillion PIC
South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation is facing its biggest governance crisis in years. With CEO Patrick Dlamini suspended, senior executives resigning, and the Financial Sector Conduct Authority launching a formal investigation, questions over transparency, accountability, and the safety of government workers’ pension funds are mounting. DA finance spokesperson Dr Mark Burke unpacks the unfolding turmoil,…
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Cops fight crime in private vehicles as their “role models” are arrested: Richard Chelin, Willem Els
Listen here In their latest interview with Chris Steyn, Willem Els of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and Richard Chelin, an independent governance expert, share details of the war on drugs and crime in South Africa. Describing the struggle of dedicated detectives, Els reveals “for the past three months at one of the units…
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BizNews Edge: R3.5tn pension fund manager PIC in crisis as FSCA launches Section 135 probe
Listen here The PIC’s governance crisis has reached the regulator. Hours after suspending CEO Patrick Dlamini and acting CIO August Uys, the board now faces a formal FSCA Section 135 investigation into governance, leadership and transparency at the R3.5 trillion asset manager. DA federal finance chairperson Dr Mark Burke tells Alec Hogg why this is…
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Nouriel Roubini on BizNews: Gulf tensions simmer, but oil shocks aren’t what they were in the 1970s
Nouriel Roubini argues that even as tensions over the Strait of Hormuz simmer unresolved, oil shocks have lost their power to derail economies the way they did in the 1970s. Strategic reserves, energy efficiency gains, OPEC discipline breakdowns and the AI investment boom have all blunted the impact, he writes. For South Africa, a net…
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Matisonn: Zille’s blue bakkie brigade hits Joburg streets while ANC hasn’t even found its candidate
Two DA campaign fronts collided this week. In Tshwane, mayoral candidate Cilliers Brink launched an urgent court bid accusing council speaker Mncedi Ndzwanana of manipulating a vote to suspend city manager Johann Mettler while letting CFO Gareth Mnisi off on serious misconduct charges, by disqualifying 13 councillors’ votes after the fact. Mnisi already faces scrutiny…
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Uber’s R240bn Delivery Hero swoop is good news for Prosus
Uber’s $14.8bn (R240bn) all-cash takeover of Germany’s Delivery Hero, announced this morning, is the latest and largest deal in a wave of consolidation reshaping the food delivery industry after its pandemic-era overexpansion. It carries a direct South African angle: Prosus, majority-owned by Naspers and the JSE’s largest constituent alongside its parent, holds just under 17%…
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What SA’s own finfluencers reveal about our financial sins
The Economist’s survey of celebrity financial gurus skips an instructive case: South Africa. We have no single Ramsey or Lewis — instead a swarm of forex and crypto “finfluencers” promising outsized returns, the same appetite for quick money that fed multi-billion-rand collapses like Mirror Trading International and Africrypt. Genuine voices like Magnus Heystek preach equities…
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SpaceX shares briefly dip below IPO price as AI hype cools, one month after record listing
Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose founder still holds South African citizenship, has seen its stock slide below its $135 IPO price barely a month after a record $86 billion listing, its fourth straight day of losses. Analysts say investors are growing wary of how much of SpaceX’s valuation rests on its xAI ambitions rather than near-term…
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Godongwana to review PIC CEO Dlamini’s suspension after board briefing
South Africa’s $219 billion (about R3.6 trillion) Public Investment Corp, custodian of government workers’ pensions, has suspended CEO Patrick Dlamini pending a probe into governance allegations, deepening a leadership crisis that’s seen a revolving door of executives. Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana says the government wasn’t involved in the board’s call, but he and Deputy Minister…
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BN Daybreak: PIC executive exodus; South Africa House shut in London; US interest rate hikes
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak, US-Iran tensions steady oil and Korean tech stocks slide. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh defends his personal trading, while South Africa’s PIC faces a deepening executive exodus. We also unpack more on the DA’s Tony Leon lobbying scandal, the temporary closure of London’s SA House, and a blunt warning from…
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Solly Moeng: Revenge politics & criminal vengeance – Leon, Steenhuisen, Hill-Lewis, Johnson, Mashazi, Malema
Listen here In his latest chat with Chris Steyn, political commentator Solly Moeng dissects the widening scandal around Tony Leon’s lobbying amid former Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen’s mission of vengeance and the damaging fall-out for the party. “…what is very clear is that the DA is no longer just walking on still waters…Geordin…
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Director’s Cut – Ryan Smith: Dirco neglect, not a planned upgrade, behind South Africa House closure
South Africa House, the country’s historic diplomatic landmark in London’s Trafalgar Square, has closed for major renovations, sparking fierce political debate. The DA accuses DIRCO of years of neglect, poor maintenance and a lack of transparency, while government insists the closure is temporary and planned. Ryan Smith argues the controversy exposes wider failures across South…
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BizNews Edge: How South Africa House fell into disrepair on Dirco’s watch
Listen here South Africa House in Trafalgar Square, a fixture of SA’s diplomatic presence in London since 1933, has closed its doors, with the DA’s Ryan Smith blaming decades of Dirco neglect and Dirco insisting it’s a planned upgrade. Alec Hogg unpacks the row, plus three stories reshaping money and power: the PIC’s suspension of…
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Dr Duarte da Silva: Wits Basin isn’t just Gold galore — it’s got a lot of valuable Uranium too
The latest report in Dr Duarte da Silva’s Gold Papers series says the Witwatersrand is one of the world’s great uranium provinces hiding in plain sight. An estimated 600,000 tonnes of uranium sit on surface in the region’s gold tailings, a by-product discarded for decades while prices were too low to justify recovery. With uranium…
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Webinar: Final opportunity to invest in the Jaltech Income Opportunities Fund before it closes
The Jaltech Income Opportunities Fund (“Jaltech IOF”) is approaching its final close, with only R20 million of investment capacity remaining. As one of BizNews’ longstanding investment partners, Jaltech has already welcomed a number of members of the BizNews tribe into the fund. For those who have not yet had the opportunity to invest, this webinar…