Jannie Mouton: And then they fired me

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

We can, however, help them with the negotiations and contracts and they have to stay alert, then opportunities will appear. One just has to be attuned to them constantly.

Whatever investment you do, you should know in what kind of underlying business you invest and understand that some companies won’t yield the kind of investments you hope for overnight. You can start something new, like a Capitec, develop it while you can take pride in a high price/earnings ratio (PE) of 25, or how much you’re willing to pay for th

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.

What has remained with me though is that I never want to be in a position again where I don’t have control over a company. Even in subsidiary companies where we have a stake warranting it, I want to have a say at board level, at least. That will be clear from what I want to tell about how PSG tackles its successes and has experienced its failures.

PSG Konsult shares are traded over the counter. PSG owns 73,5% and the rest are in the hands of management, branch managers and external shareholders. The company remains a living (and growing) monument for PSG’s model of ultimate empowerment: every manager shares in the profit, therefore he does what he can to increase growth. Quality fieldworkers

I knew Keerom was a much cheaper way of securing a stake in Naspers. Some unlisted shares can be bought at a rebate. Therefore one could get a big chunk of Naspers through Keerom or Naspers Investments, as well as control with high voting rights. It’s a principle I’ve applied time and again since then.

Let me be honest: one can continue ad infinitum about PSG’s ingenuity, but the role luck sometimes plays can’t be ignored. PAG’s sale price was plain darn luck; don’t let anyone tell you a different story. Sheer luck. That’s how PSG started. We started small and slowly achieved success. Success gives one self-confidence and that’s quite contagious

One gets to know the market over time. If everyone is optimistic and even people who don’t work with the stock exchange every day start chatting about it, it’s selling time, as sure as nails. By that time you have to have the cash in your hand, else you’re going to be very sorry. And if nobody is interested in the stock exchange anymore, it’s buyin