Bets are off for bookie boy Markus
Steinhoff’s business was a bit of a gamble and racing fan Jooste has come a cropper
If Markus Jooste ever dreamt of somersaulting into the Guinness World Records annual, he did a damn good job this week of staging his bid to go where nobody has gone before.
He could have balanced 10 North Korean midgets on his nose, or performed backflips off Table Mountain in his jockstrap to achieve immortality. Instead, he wiped out up to 90% of the value of Steinhoff, the multinational he ran until Tuesday night. Not a bad way to get attention.
But really, let’s get serious. How, in a matter of days, does one destroy a multinational with 130 000 employees in 32 countries and worth gazoodles of dollars? Do you hand the keys to the safe to Grace Mugabe? Appoint Shaun Abrahams as the new CEO? Spring Bernie Madoff from chookie?
As Jooste quit as CEO and slunk away with his tail between his legs, reports estimated that the multinational that imploded on his watch had lost R194-billion in value. That’s a mind-boggling amount of lolly to us ordinary people. It appears you have to be really clever to blow that kind of money.
By his own admission, the 56-year-old, described by a friend as an ordinary boykie, had plenty of lucky breaks during his career. Although his father had a modest job at the post office and money was tight, dad was close to his son, who describes him as a “very special and intelligent guy”.
“When we were young, every night he would sit and go through all your homework with you and help you. It was a culture. Children develop their intelligence very young and he put his whole life into his children. He couldn’t afford other things, so that probably helped a lot. He built that drive to be successful.”
Excellent matric results secured Jooste a bursary from Stellenbosch University and although he left varsity three years later with a R100 000 study debt, he was hungry for success and now possessed a qualification as a chartered accountant.
Meeting Christo Wiese
Ironically, when he started his articles in 1982, the first office the young Jooste walked into on his first day was owned by none other than billionaire businessman Christo Wiese. “I always said that with everything in life, the path is there for you,” Jooste once told a financial journalist about meeting Wiese.
But three decades later the brown stuff has hit the fan in the most spectacular fashion and right now Wiese must wish that his pal and fellow member of the so-called Stellenbosch mafia had tripped and smacked his head on the paving stones. Thanks to Jooste’s shenanigans, Wiese lost nearly R30-billion this week. Try explaining that to the missus.
As for Jooste, at least with $400-million (about R5.47-billion) in the bank, he can afford tissues to wipe away the tears.
News sites reported that building operations have stopped on the Jooste holiday home in Hermanus in the wake of his disgrace. Naturally it was projected to be the most expensive house in the seaside
I always said that with everything in life the path is there for you Markus Jooste On Christo Wiese
town. Naturally it was being built on pristine land right on the oceanfront and probably flouting environmental regulations. Naturally the foundation excavations were the size of a shopping centre. (Why miss an opportunity to play the mogul’s favourite game: “Mine is bigger than yours”?)
Although we must now question his business acumen, Jooste must hope he can now focus on his other passion. He definitely knows more about horses than that one end bites and the other end kicks.
A bookmaker’s runner
In an interview last year he described how his love for horseracing started when as a young boy he went with his father to the Tattersalls shop, which was right next door to his dad’s office in Pretoria. “You listened to the commentary via radio. At the age of 12, I was what you call a runner — the guy who ran between bookmakers with tickets laying off their bets with each other.”
But this little sprog was never going to be content with just risking his pocket money on some donkey tarted up as a dead cert, and today he is one of the biggest owners of thoroughbred horses in the country, reportedly with more than 200 horses in training.
“To be able to race in England, in France, and all over the world is a whole new experience . . . If I come into a hotel room at 11 at night, I fire up my iPad and watch my horses racing all over the world. That’s when I relax.”
As the next chapter in this humungous disaster looms, the many victims caught in its wake might have this question for aspirant business students: What would you call a businessman who starts his career with a R100 000 student debt — only to end his career three decades later with a R194billion loss?
The suggestions will no doubt come thick and fast, but some troll on the internet felt strongly enough about Jooste’s follies to call him “a massive p**s”.