Joffe to step down as Long4Life CEO

The big news out of Long4Life is that Brian Joffe will be vacating the CEO position, but will stay on as chair at the end of the current financial year.

The announcement, made on Thursday at the tail end of the presentation of the group’s interim results to August 2021, gives no insights into the reasons for Joffe’s departure.

Joffe spent 27 years building

Bidvest into an international behemoth before leaving the group in 2017. He brought the same formula of selecting entrepreneurial managers and reasonably valued businesses to his next venture, Long4Life.

Joffe is in his mid-70s so he will no doubt want to enjoy some of the fruits of his labours built up over more than three decades.

Long4Life was always going to be a group to follow, given the Joffe association and his past record at Bidvest.

As Sasfin market commentator David Shapiro remarked many years ago, Joffe’s success was his ability to spot opportunities others didn’t see.

For many years Bidvest looked like an ill-fitting agglomeration of businesses that lacked a coherent theme, but Joffe saw something others didn’t: the ability to bind these businesses together through synergy or cross-marketing.

He rarely made mistakes. He encouraged management to be bold, and was willing to add a capital where needed to get things moving in the right direction.

The same formula that worked at Bidvest was clearly in evidence at Long4Life, and shareholders will take comfort that he is not entirely retired from the company.

Current chair Graham Dempster will assume the role of deputy chair. Meanwhile the board has started the process of searching for a new CEO.

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