Archives

More blog posts

Latest Comment

@ Griggo
If he does it anonymously how come you know about it ????
by Piet

Read full post

30 August 2010 17:30

Is Bidvest's Joffe losing his appetite?

Alec Hogg wonders whether age is slowing down the 63-year-old business builder.

MOOI RIVER - As we get older, most of us tend to become more cautious, more conservative. It's part of the human condition. So why not entrepreneurs, including the best of them like Bidvest's founder Brian Joffe? Which is not altogether a bad thing in turbulent times where most of the swashbucklers have disappeared into bankruptcy or the unemployment queue.

Read full post

27 July 2010 17:43

Billionaire Graham Beck will rule, benevolently, from grave

Alec Hogg reckons SA lost one of its best when GB died on Tuesday.

MOOI RIVER - One of the last of South Africa's rough and tough mining entrepreneurs, self-made billionaire Graham Beck, passed away at a clinic in London this morning. Beck, who would have been 81 in December, was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer two months ago.

Read full post

20 July 2010 22:46

Nassim Taleb: Big idea was born in SA

Author of bestseller The Black Swan, tells Alec Hogg he was deeply influenced by a visit to the Pilanesberg.

ALEC HOGG: It's Tuesday 20 July 2010 and in this special podcast we link up with Nicholas Nassim Taleb in New York. Well, he's no stranger to people on Moneyweb through books like Fooled by Randomness and of course, The Black Swan. Nassim, going back to the first book of yours that you produced, Fooled by Randomness, after that I realised that I'd rather be lucky than be smart.

NASSIM TALEB: Yeah, the definition of luck is much more complicated. You want to be lucky but you also need to be smart because whatever you are going to get from luck only, may not last, you see. The main idea, I've refined it, is tell people the following: Without luck, you will do very well in life, you will get a BMW, you will get a tenureship Professor, you will go somewhere. So to get ...

Read full post

14 July 2010 19:23

Incentives: The key to understanding people

Alec Hogg chats to world renowned author Stephen Dubner.

Read full post

08 July 2010 15:22

Cynthia's 26bn reasons for the AngloPlat chair

Alec Hogg reckons some believe governance means little when real money's involved.

MOOI RIVER - Perhaps the most important lesson from my brief spell as a corporate insider was that we members of the Fourth Estate are rarely trusted with the whole truth. Unless journalists research diligently, ask the right questions and then insist on getting them answered, only part of the real story gets into the public domain. 

It's not that large corporations consciously deceive. The downside of having a falsehoods exposed is so great that no sane organization would countenance lying. But that doesn't stop executives hoping embarrassing truths won't surface. That is they don't talk openly about them, then perhaps nobody else will.

Read full post