No, you don’t get rich by Robin and cheatin’
SANLAM Private Wealth portfolio manager Neo Kgantsi is nothing if not creative in his approach to marketing. In a media release covering three key areas in which business owners are advised they can “grow and maintain their wealth through generations” by “diversifying, collaborating and trusting”, he uses a fictional superhero to make his point.
According to Kgantsi, if Bruce Wayne — aka Batman — was a real person, he would be the 73rd richest man in the world, boasting a net worth of about $11.6bn.
This, he extrapolates from the recently released film Batman vs Superman: Dawn of Justice, in which Batman speaks about his family’s generational wealth, saying: “This is about my legacy. You know my father sat me down right here, he told me what Wayne Manor was built on. The first generation made their fortune trading with the French — pelts and skins — they were hunters.”
“Batman’s considerable wealth was built up over a number of generations,” says Kgantsi.
“The first generation of Waynes handed over their merchant house to the second, which, by the 19th century, had become a formidable corporate company. Now, in the 21st century, under the watchful eye of Batman and following an excellent diversification strategy, it continues to achieve success in the financial sector and high-end technologies.”
While Batman may be a fictional character, says Kgantsi, “there is still so much that we can learn from the Wayne family business. They grew from being hunters and continue to achieve success.”
50 shades of spider
BEING bitten by a spider can be painful, especially when it is on the penis, which is admittedly an unusual place for a spider to strike. But it happened recently to an Australian tradesman who was using a toilet in Sydney when he was bitten by a redback spider, a deadly variety of the equally nasty black widow that is found in SA.
The BBC reported that the unfortunate man survived after treatment in hospital, with his extremities intact even if his dignity wasn’t so fortunate. But, a terrible fate would have awaited him had the man not received prompt treatment.
According to Wikipedia, the redback “kills its prey by injecting a complex venom through its two fangs when it bites, before wrapping (the prey) in silk and sucking out the liquefied insides”.