Category: News
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US banking giant drops its bet on the Rand after SARB’s no change on rates
South Africa’s Reserve Bank stunned markets on Thursday, holding the repo rate at 7% in a split 4-2 vote – defying 17 of 20 economists polled, who had expected a hike after inflation jumped to 5% in June. The rand promptly weakened against both the euro and the dollar, its worst session since March. Below,…
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Yale Econ Prof Goldberg on BizNews: US switching off magnetic attraction for world’s talent
Yale economist Pinelopi Goldberg – a former World Bank chief economist – argues that Washington’s new student-visa rule marks a quiet retreat from America’s defining promise as a land of opportunity. From 15 September 2026, F-1 and J visa holders will be admitted for a fixed term capped at four years, replacing the open-ended “duration…
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Mag 7 sees worst day since tariff selloff as $797bn wiped off Big Tech amid AI spending fears
The AI trade that’s driven markets for three years just hit a wall. Alphabet and Tesla’s earnings spooked investors already jittery about ballooning capex commitments, and Wall Street answered with its worst Big Tech selloff since April 2025’s tariff shock. Add an escalating Iran conflict pushing oil higher, and you’ve got what one fund manager…
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The rise of ‘Me-conomics’ and why solo diners are winning: Howard Chua-Eoan
Solo dining in the US is up 23% in a year, and it’s not a fringe trend. From Japan’s ohitorisama culture to hot pot chains building solo booths, businesses worldwide are re-engineering around people who eat, travel and spend alone, a shift South Africa’s own rising single-person household numbers suggest isn’t going away either. Bloomberg’s…
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Matisonn: How the Arrest of Gen. Khumalo triggered Mkhwanazi’s July 6 bombshell claims
Before General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi’s explosive July 6 media conference alleging syndicate infiltration at the top of the police, there was the arrest of Crime Intelligence chief General Dumisani Khumalo. John Matisonn traces the chain, from a murdered whistle-blower and a disbanded task team to Police Minister Senzo Mchunu’s fateful decisions, and asks whether IDAC head…
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PIC saga: Masondo walks, but the real fight is only starting
Deputy Finance Minister David Masondo has resigned as PIC Chairperson, but Alec Hogg argues this is a strategic exit, not a clean one. With the CEO and acting CIO suspended, the FSCA investigating, directors resigning and a court date looming this week, Masondo used his final act to flag unresolved allegations rather than let them…
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Tesla’s worst day in a year hands short sellers a $4.3bn payday
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle giant just handed short sellers their biggest one-day windfall in months. Tesla shares cratered 14.5% on Thursday after a second-quarter earnings miss reignited doubts about the company’s costly AI and robotics ambitions, a stock many South African retail investors hold through EasyEquities and offshore ETF exposure. Bears are now sitting on…
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Amazon Leo will beat Starlink within a year, says Herotel CEO
Herotel CEO Van Zyl Botha is betting big on Amazon Leo, the satellite broadband service launching in South Africa via Herotel from 2027. His claim that Amazon will match or beat Starlink’s speeds within a year is bold given Amazon has fewer than 400 satellites in orbit against Starlink’s 10,800, and its rocket partners are…
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Lance Dickson: Turning outrage into consequence: the AI cluster built for South Africa’s next boycott
Listen here Lance Dickson kept having the same conversation. A failing council. A price hike nobody could explain. Everyone complained. Nothing changed. So he built Ryze instead, a self-funded civic action platform designed to convert that outrage into organised economic consequence. In his latest interview with Irakli, the founder unpacks the six-agent AI cluster running…
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Unlocking High-Yield Private Debt: The Jaltech Income Opportunities Fund
Listen here Join the leadership team at Jaltech for an exclusive overview of the new Jaltech Income Opportunities Fund – a spin-off from their highly successful Section 12J investment strategy. Designed to target structured debt funding for established, mid-sized South African businesses, this fund addresses an unserved niche left open by traditional banks while delivering…
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BN Daybreak: Zille on Joburg’s last chance; AI stock warnings; Cape gangs; Civic tech
Listen here In today’s BizNews Daybreak, Helen Zille warns Johannesburg faces its final chance to reverse municipal collapse. Heindrich Wyngaard explains why military presence alone cannot dismantle the Cape Flats’ deep-rooted gang economy. Lance Dickson introduces “Ryze,” a platform channeling public rage into organized civic action. Finally, Sean Peche cautions investors against rampant speculation within…
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Sean Peche: SpaceX, Tesla, Alphabet — where smart money goes while everyone chases AI
Listen here Sean Peche has spent 2026 doing the opposite of the crowd. While the market piles into AI, memory chips and Elon Musk’s every pivot, the Ranmore founder has been selling Tesla, walking away from SpaceX and quietly buying into Adobe and Tencent instead. In this conversation with Alec Hogg, the South African-born, UK-based…
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Parliament faces protest over lagging legislation for a provincial referendum: Heindrich Wyngaard
Listen here In this interview with Chris Steyn, Heindrich Wyngaard, the executive chairperson of Cape Forum, details plans for a protest outside the National Assembly next month over the long wait for appropriate legislation to enable a provincial referendum . “And we are also planning to be present at that Home Affairs Portfolio Committee meeting…
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Echoes through time: How technology is preserving art’s legacy
By Ivan Damon Have you ever wondered why some artists’ legacies endure – their works, a signature, a name, resonates across generations and timelines – while others fade into obscurity? While artistic merit undeniably plays a role, the answer may lie increasingly in the evolving landscape of art preservation and the innovative means of access,…
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Director’s Cut – Helen Zille: Time is running out for bankrupt Joburg to be saved
Listen here Helen Zille has swapped the Iron Lady tag for “DJ Gogo”, but the numbers she puts on the table are dead serious. In this conversation with Alec Hogg, she says Johannesburg only spent half of an eight billion rand infrastructure budget last year, warns that DA supporters staying home on election day could…
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BizNews Edge: Helen Zille – “Joburg’s expenditure on infrastructure is actually criminal”
Listen here Joburg is bankrupt, and Helen Zille says the city did it to itself. In her director’s cut interview, the DA’s mayoral candidate explains why half of Johannesburg’s infrastructure budget went unspent last year, how “wasted” ward votes are quietly handing the ANC an advantage, and what she really thinks about the Steenhuisen-Tony Leon…
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The Economist: OpenAI’s Hugging Face hack – why the AI containment problem just got a lot scarier
An unreleased OpenAI model did something no AI system was meant to do: it broke out of its sandbox, found its way onto the open internet and hacked Hugging Face, a $4.5 billion AI platform. No human attacker was involved. The model was hunting for shortcuts to a cybersecurity test it had been set, exploited…
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Mr Market sends Musk “don’t believe you” message after Tesla quarterlies
Tesla’s Q2 2026 earnings, released after the market close last night, exposed a growing gap between the famous Elon Musk narrative and hard numbers. Revenue hit a record $28.24 billion (up 26%) and deliveries reached 480,126 vehicles, yet operating income collapsed 57% to $398 million as profit margins inverted from 4.1% to 1.4%. Free cash…
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Anthea Jeffery: SA wants offshore oil, but government’s own rules will scare investors to Namibia
South Africa has just 13 days of fuel in reserve, and the government wants to fix that by unlocking offshore oil and gas worth potentially decades of domestic supply. But the new Upstream Petroleum Resources Development Act asks investors to hand over 20% to the state plus 10% to black South Africans, against Namibia’s far…
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BN Portfolio: Alphabet’s $200bn bet revealed last night: Why Pichai is spending like crazy
Alphabet just posted its twelfth straight quarter of double-digit growth, with group revenue up 24% and Google Cloud surging 82% and its backlog now $514bn. Yet the stock fell 4% after CFO Anat Ashkenazi raised 2026 capex guidance to around $195–205bn and warned that 2027 spending would rise further still. CEO Sundar Pichai calls the…