Naspers banks on Tencent
Naspers/Tencent
IT looks like Tencent can do no wrong. The Chinese regulators have just given it the go-ahead to set up a private bank. That is an enormous vote of confidence in a country where having the backing of government determines whether or not you succeed and how well you succeed.
It provides an extremely useful underpinning for Tencent’s ambitious plans to grow in the extremely profitable banking and e-commerce segments of smartphone activity.
News of this development came too late to be included in Naspers’ annual report released on Friday.
Anyway, the thing that always interests Naspers’ watchers is what Koos Bekker, who went off on a gap year at the end of March, is doing with his 16.4 million shares.
He has sold none. The shares are now worth about R20 billion and generate annual dividends of about R70 million.
Plodding on beyond the remuneration section into PayTV, the reader will learn that SuperSport continues to be the biggest funder of local sports on the African continent. It funds about 70% of all sport in subSaharan Africa.
An amazing company.
Altron
FULL marks to Altron for releasing the complete results of voting at its AGM last week.
Altron has published these details for a few years now, and word from the company is that doing so has improved its engagement with shareholders.
Altron’s attitude is in stark contrast to that of most companies on the JSE, which seem to take the view that giving information to shareholders somehow makes management a little worse off. It is amazing that so many companies continue to believe that their obligations to their shareholders are served by an anodyne report on whether or not the resolutions were passed.
Just a few days after Altron’s exemplary disclosure, Mediclinic released the following (pretty meaningless) statement: “All the ordinary and special resolutions set out in the notice of the AGM were approved by the requisite majority of votes.” Presumably, Mediclinic’s sheeplike investors are satisfied with this. The JSE will soon make it mandatory for voting details to be made public. Why so many companies are waiting for the rules to be changed, when the benefits to shareholders are so obvious, is puzzling.
Pick n Pay
PICK n Pay’s new CEO, Richard Brasher, must be relieved that he is secure in the relative safety of a major SA retailer and has avoided the blood bath that is Tesco. Brasher joined Pick n Pay early this year after 27 years at Tesco, the last few of which were spent as CEO of UK operations.
Brasher was part of a team that made Tesco one of the world’s leading retailers. But Tesco is looking less like a global force and more like the spent force Pick n Pay was about two years ago.
Much of Tesco’s woes are due to the aggressive growth pursued by former Tesco boss Terry Leahy during its boom time, and more recently its seeming inability to address the challenge from discount stores.
The old guard at Pick n Pay will know only too well how easy it is to be threatened by obscurity in this industry.