Steinheist by Rob Rose

Author:Rob Rose
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tafelberg
Published: 2018-10-11T09:19:54+00:00

9

The Rise and Fall of

Christo Wiese

____

“In some ways, I’m quite lucky to have lost only R59bn. If this thing had happened just one year later, I would have lost everything.” These are the words of Christo Wiese – the man who describes himself as a “failed lawyer”, but who has been described by others as South Africa’s answer to Walmart founder Sam Walton or celebrity investor Warren Buffett, or even as the real-life counterpart of JR Ewing, the scheming oil baron in the soapie Dallas.

Since the early 1980s, Wiese has been the ace dealmaker of corporate South Africa, wresting control of some of the finest brands in South Africa. By 2015, his portfolio included cash retailer Pep, Africa’s largest super­market chain, Shoprite, and gym chain Virgin Active as well as a trolley of London high street retailers.

That brain-numbing R59bn he lost in Steinhoff was about half his fortune. It’s more money than all but a handful of people on the globe stand any prospect of ever amassing, let alone seeing vanish. And yet, it could have been worse.

Steinhoff’s dénouement happened at the eleventh hour of an endgame that Wiese had been planning for four years. The way it was meant to end was that Steinhoff would have controlled the STAR African retail business, which would have been made up of Pep, the JD Group and, the biggest prize of all, Shoprite. These are the cream of African retailing, clocking up more than R200bn in sales every year. Combined, they would have formed the most powerful conglomerate ever to operate on the continent. And the man destined to pull the strings at the apex of this vast retail empire would have been Christo Wiese.

By December 2017, this plan was about 90% complete. “It was almost done – all of it,” says Wiese, speaking in his office in the industrial grey of Parow, in Cape Town.1

The Christo Wiese of today is still sprightly, sharp enough to anticipate the end point of any line of questioning, and relaxed enough to lapse into an amusing anecdote about a friend on a whim. He’s 77 years old, but about ten of those years have been added since December 2017.

“Steinhoff controlled Pep, it controlled the other retail businesses and Shoprite was already halfway into the structure too. The Public Investment Corporation and I had agreed to put all our shares in Shoprite into STAR, and in return I would have got shares in Steinhoff.” Had that actually happened, Wiese’s fortune, which had stacked up into a considerable heap after his five decades in business, would have all but vanished. Had he got shares in Steinhoff for his stake in Shoprite, he would have lost the jewel in his crown. Had Jooste not been exposed when he was, but rather a few months later, Wiese would, effectively, have been done. It’s a poignant illus­tration of how the fate of such immense fortunes can hang by an exquisitely delicate thread, the finest margin separating safety and utter devastation.

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