Bekker just missed the No 2 spot
BONANZA: Hendrik du Toit, head of Investec Asset Management, got his windfall because UK rules do not apply to the unit IF Naspers’s former CEO Koos Bekker had not sold 11.7 million of his Naspers shares while he was on sabbatical in the last financial year, he would have comfortably made it to No 2 on this year’s Rich List.
His 16.4 million shares would have had an end-November value of R35.4billion, putting him between Christo Wiese and Ivan Glasenberg.
The Rich List rankings are based on holdings in listed companies in South Africa. This means any assets Bekker bought with the estimated R15-billion pre-tax profit he made on the sale — such as the multimillionpound estate he is believed to have purchased in Somerset, England — are not taken into consideration.
But even after last year’s sale, Bekker’s remaining stake in Naspers puts him in 9th position with a value of R10.1-billion.
Legend has it that in a bid to rein in Bekker’s appetite for risk-taking, back in the late ’90s the board of Naspers agreed that Bekker, then its new chief operating officer, would only be paid in shares. Legend or not, fortunately for Naspers’s shareholders, this unique payment system did not dull Bekker’s appetite for risk. It was as a direct result of his risktaking that all Naspers’ shareholders are now so much wealthier.
One of the many bets Bekker took STUFF OF LEGEND: Koos Bekker, chairman of Naspers while he was CEO was in 2001 when he gambled a comparatively small $34-million on a little-known Chinese internet company called Tencent.
The investment went unnoticed until 2013, when Tencent’s explosive growth in China saw its share price rocket. It pulled the Naspers share price along behind it.
Since the beginning of 2013, the share price has surged from around R540 to a recent high of around R2 120, making all shareholders considerably wealthier.
While China has provided much of the wealth enjoyed by mining company executives and shareholders, this year Naspers was the only one to benefit from Chinese spending.
The great news for Bekker, who has been credited with saving Naspers from a slow print-media death, is that over the years his rolling five-year employment contracts with Naspers have become increasingly generous.
For his first five-year contract in 1998, Bekker was awarded 3.3 million Naspers shares.
In 2003, he was awarded 4.4 million shares. The third and final five-year contract was hugely more generous. In terms of that contract Bekker was awarded 11.7 million shares.
These are the shares that generated the estimated R15-billion pretax profit when sold last year.
The effective tax rate on the R15billion, which is deemed to be a capital gain for tax purposes, was just 13.3%. This would mean Bekker handed R2-billion over to the taxman and pocketed the rest.
At an earlier stage, when the allocated shares vested with Bekker, he would have paid income tax of around R1.3-billon.
Sources close to the company dispute the legend around Bekker’s remuneration and claim it was his idea and reflected his faith in Naspers.