Jannie Mouton: And then they fired me

Pure pleasure is what PSG Konsult signifies to me. If you’ve ever seen a business that’s running like a well-oiled machine, that would be Konsult. The only reason I’m still on the board of directors is because every time I want to step down, chief executive Willem Theron persuades me otherwise. The management team is so strong that they don’t need

Jaap du Toit admits I never watch over one’s shoulder and am never the boss, but there is real pressure: He has his hand on one – he demands a lot. In the end he couldn’t care less how one makes something work. He’s not inhumane, but he’s not interested in glib talk. If you come up with it a second time, he will tell you you’re talking hogwash: “If

After many lessons I only invest in companies I understand, whose management I know and whose character and culture I like. Three questions kept me busy for a long time: How does one make a company grow, when are people happy and what’s the key to making a success of a company? The answer is ultimate empowerment.

Maybe that’s also one of the reasons why I’m such an avid buyer of PSG shares and have never sold a single share. Advisors of readers of financial pages would be horrified, but I often borrow money to get hold of more PSG shares.

Apart from PSG I hope what I leave behind for my children are above all a mindset of enthusiasm in everything they tackle, the tireless search for solutions, and the ethos to work hard in order to make a success of whatever they try to achieve.

The advantage of humble beginnings, we know now, is that there were no expectations.

Drowning in the e-mail ocean of a bureaucracy – formality is stupidity

Yet who would one choose: a Warren Buffett who has built up so much; or a Jack Welch who might have managed the largest company in the world, General Electric, but by means of cracking whips and a culture of fear about who would be fired next? PSG subsidiaries have been compelled to retrench people, but I hope I’m leading from the front rather than

I don’t know whether I can add anything an investor doesn’t already know, for the basic principles remain the same. Moreover, I do risky things that I would never advise others to do.

The trick is to try to buy where limitations are still in place and when the old board is still in charge. Then one buys cheaply – one might even buy only the buildings at 60% of the real value. That’s something we understand very well at PSG. Yet one needs patience, because at these businesses the change towards being more commercially-minded happ