An Article By Ian Kilbride Published on 6 February 2024. President Ramaphosa referenced ‘business’ no less than 21 times in his 2023 state of the nation address. By contrast, Former President Mandela mentioned business just four times in his 1998 SONA. This would indicate an increasing awareness of the importance of business and constructive relations between government and business, but it may also indicate a shift in the vexed political and power relationship between the two. I think the evidence favours the former assumption, however, as government has recognised that the business sector is a vital partner in the future development of South Africa and we should view ourselves in less ideological terms and more as developmental partners seeking the same broad outcome, a prosperous South Africa While the relative prominence of business in the recent SONA is to be welcomed and companies are cautioned to take seriously the content and commitments made in the annual address, it behoves organised business to speak for itself and reflect annually on the state of our sector. This then is a call for an annual State of Business address (S.O.B.), or the more apposite homophonic acronym, SOBA. Looking at today’s state of affairs, […] The post The State Of Business Address (SOBA) appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

Why I am looking forward to 2024. Dear readers,Every year is an important year in South Africa, but 2024 is particularly so. This year may be regarded as the biggest test of democracy globally as country’s containing half of the world’s population will go to the polls. With all its flaws, democracy is to be celebrated and despite the myriad of challenges confronting us, I believe we still live in a better world than we did thirty years ago. While the Taiwanese, Indian, UK and US elections will capture world attention, it is our very own South African election (likely to be held in May this year) that will preoccupy most of us. The opinion polls are throwing up some interesting national and provincial trends and it is clear that the political sands are shifting. The Spirit Invest Group invests very heavily in local and international investment advisors andanalysts who live, eat and breath financial markets, economics and politics and we will pass on the benefits of their wisdom insights and professional skills sets to our clients, professional network and supporters through-out the year. We will also send you our analysis of the State of the Nation opening of parliament […] The post From the Chairman’s Desk appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride, published on 30 January 2024. The late great Queen lead man, Freddie Mercury, balefully sang, “Who wants to live forever?” The poignancy of the lyrics were made all the more powerful by the knowledge that he himself was dying of AIDS. If only he could have lived for a few years longer. Today, medical science and treatment means that HIV is no longer a death sentence, but rather a chronic condition that can be successfully managed. This is progress. But medical progress also raises profoundly important questions about longevity and life extension that go to the heart of the human condition, medical ethics, class relations, national demographics, power relationships, global politics, the economy and indeed the very survival of the human species. Particularly rich and equally famous businesspeople are pouring literally hundreds of millions of dollars into companies searching for the elixir of long (if not unending) life. These include the young Uber meister of artificial intelligence, Sam Altman, Google’s Larry Page, Pay Pal’s Peter Thiel and the ubiquitous Jeff Bezos. To date, there is no indication that either Donald Trump or Joe Biden have bought in. Perhaps this is beyond science. The abovementioned modern […] The post Who Wants To Live Forever? appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride published on 10 January 2024. “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.” Winston Churchill’s famous quote faces its severest test in 2024. For the first time in history, this year, half of the world’s population across 50 countries will go to the polls and cast their ballots to elect their next government. This alone is an endorsement of Churchill’s maxim, but even more powerful is that in a recent survey of 36, 000 people across 30 countries, 80 percent of respondents stated that they wished to live in a democracy. It’s unfair to say that some elections don’t count, or don’t matter. But, for example, the electoral preferences of the 11,000 inhabitants of Tuvalu won’t move any needles, although their concerns are global in nature as a small island state threatened by rising oceans. Size is not the defining criterion, however, as the outcome of the January election in Taiwan could tilt the country closer a catastrophic conflict with mainland China, or present an opportunity to reset the increasingly dangerous and high stakes stand-off between the two. Other elections such as those to be held in Russia, Bangladesh, Iran, Venezuela […] The post Democracy is the worst form of government appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride published on 9 January 2024 in Skyways Magazine. You can have too much of a good thing. This well-worn phrase applies to the wide choice available to individual investments. Choice is a good thing of course and is the essence of individual freedom, but can also lead to confusion and costly mistakes. So, it’s vitally important to understand the choices available and their risks when making investment decisions. As the names suggests, balanced funds and unit trusts invest across all the major asset classes, namely, shares, fixed income securities (such as bonds) and cash. The idea behind a balanced fund or unit trust is that risk is reduced by not putting all your investment eggs in one basket. So, for example, if shares (otherwise known as equities) are under pressure and interest rates are high, the balanced fund has the flexibility to invest more in cash and bonds in order to produce a better return. Conversely, if there is a bull market and shares are booming, the fund can invest its cash, liquidate its fixed income holdings and invest more in shares to ride the bull market. At the opposite end of the spectrum are […] The post Choose Your Investments Wisely! appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride published on 21 December 2023 in IOL. Philanthropy is a set of private initiatives seeking to improve the well-being of humankind by preventing and solving social problems. Its etymological root is derived from the Greek ‘philanthrōpia’, meaning the love of humanity.   The Forbes 2023 Philanthropy Score finds that, unsurprisingly, the wealthiest are the biggest philanthropists. Yet, while the quantum of philanthropic giving in the US, for example, amounts to $250 billion for the year, this constitutes less than six percent of the worth of the top 400 super rich. Only eleven of the US’s 400 super rich have given away 20% or more of their wealth to philanthropic causes. While 70 billionaires have signed Bill and Melinda Gates’ Giving Pledge, committing 50% or more of their wealth to philanthropy, George Soros (who did not sign the pledge) is the only name on the 400 super rich list to have done so. Notably, McKenzie Scott has already donated $15 billion of her divorce settlement with Jeff Bizos to philanthropy. Berkshire Hathaway President, Warren Buffet, holds the title of most generous billionaire, giving away $55 billion of his personal fortune to date. Yet, it is the […] The post Is There Still A Place For Philanthropy? appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. We are all entitled to a wish list at Christmas, so at the end of an eventful 2023, I have compiled my own ‘easy to do’ list for Santa to make South Africa a better place for all in 2024. By the way, I commit to my bit too! The first is to rekindle the spirit of national unity we celebrated in the early years of democracy and which occasionally resurfaces when our sporting teams perform brilliantly on the world stage. We live on the legacy of Madiba, but it is up to today’s generation to create our own future and a legacy worthy of our children and their families. The second is to replace national despair with belief and hope. I encounter inspirational people from all walks of life every day, young and old, but equally, I witness those for whom the burden of day-to-day living is just too much. People need to see a brighter future and we all have a responsibility to bring this about. The third is to tap into and unleash the raw energy, creativity and talent of South Africans to turn around the ailing economy and demonstrate that we […] The post My 2023 Christmas Wish List For South Africa appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. It may come as a surprise to learn that the South African tourism industry employs ten times the number of people than that of gold mining. In fact, tourism employs more than twice the number of people in the entire South African mining sector. Tourism not only provides in excess of one million direct and indirect local jobs, or 9,2% of total formal employment. The sector is extraordinarily employment generative too, with one job created for every 16-30 visitors. Placed in macro-economic perspective, the entire sector contributes some 8,6% to the nation’s GDP. Tourism is truly South Africa’s new gold, but with a number of additional benefits. The first and most obvious benefit of tourism is that it is entirely renewable and sustainable. Indeed, with the exception of the Covid lockdown years, both international and local tourist numbers to South Africa have grown steadily for the past two decades. In fact, 2023 to date has been a bumper tourism year, with some four million tourist arrivals in the first six months, representing a whopping 78% increase over the same period in 2022. Yet, we are still only operating at 80% of the pre-pandemic arrivals, so […] The post Tourism – South Africa’s New Gold appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. President Ramaphosa has declined to make public the Ministerial Performance Assessments he instituted in 2020, contending that he does not wish their disclosure to be used as a political tool to embarrass members of his cabinet. The obvious conclusion to be drawn is that, at best, the performance assessments themselves are flawed and inadequate, or more likely, that the performance of Ministers is so poor as to expose in black and white what the country already knows experientially. That is, with few exceptions, his cabinet is unfit for office and that the ultimate embarrassment lies with the President for its appointment, retention and performance. But as 2023 draws to a close, there is nothing preventing the public from conducting its own ‘Performance Assessment’ of the President and members of his cabinet based on the promises, goals, targets and objectives set out in the 2023 State of the Nation Address. In this year’s SONA the President focussed on tackling the four pillars of national discontent, namely: load shedding, unemployment, poverty and the rising cost of living and crime and corruption. His Performance Assessment in each is an ‘F’ for fail. Ramaphosa proclaimed progress in the five […] The post Public Accountability appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. Apart from members of your own family, who is the most important person in the world? Is it Joe Biden, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, the Pope, Elon Musk, or maybe Sean Dyche?  For me, a serious contender is a little-known man called Simon Stiell. A Grenadian former politician, Stiell serves as the Executive Secretary of the United Nations United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and in a real sense, holds all our futures in his hands. Like all bureaucratic positions, his formal job description is as vague as the sorites paradox, but his actual role and purpose in life is to ensure that the world moves towards achieving its critical climate change target of keeping global warming below 1,5c from its pre-industrial levels. No pressure then! Stiell’s relative obscurity and with all due respect, coming from a country with little political clout off the cricket field, is an advantage when attempting to shepherd some 200 parties, (member states) and 85, 000 attendees to the convention through the narrow gate of consensus. Customarily, it is the President of the Conference of the Parties (CoP) that captures the limelight of success, or cops the flack […] The post A Message To The Most Important Person In The World appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

Click here to view the Original Article in the Mail & Guardian. South African football players who have dreamed of playing in the English Premier League may now realise it with the launch of the British Football Academy, which will scout for local talent to play in the strongest ranked league in the world. Three football-mad British friends, now business partners, John Read, Peter Coyle and Ian Kilbride, have always wondered why only a handful of South African players have made it to the English Premier League and decided to dig deep to unearth the country’s untapped talent. In an interview with the Mail & Guardian ahead of the launch of the British Football Academy in Pinetown last Saturday, marked by a football match between its first intake of 18 youths and the Kusekhaya Football Aces, which plays in the Durban Central League, Read said he and his friends had fallen in love with South Africa, and now wanted to make a difference by fulfilling a niche to source players for the English Premier League. Read described himself as a lifelong Manchester City fan who has worked extensively with The Football Association in England and has consulted for three other major international sports: rugby, tennis and athletics. He was the […] The post British Football Academy scouts for SA talent appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. Wise, crusty, acerbic, witty, creative, modest and breathtakingly successful, Charles T ‘Charlie’ Munger was a one off, the likes of whom we will never see again. This does not mean to say that we cannot learn lessons from his remarkable life however. Amidst all the hype that has surrounded the passing of this legend of the asset management world at the age of 99, it’s easy to forget that his path to financial success was littered with personal tragedy, loss and recovery. Born into a middle-class family in Omaha Nebraska, Charlie actually worked for Warren Buffet’s Uncle’s grocery store, although due to their age difference, the two investment legends never met until much later in life. I have written before about the importance of failure and indeed Charlie’s early investment companies went south to the tune of 32% in 1973 and 31% in 1974. An inauspicious start for the lawyer turned investment ‘guru’. At the personal level, Charlie’s first marriage ended in divorce and he experienced the tragedy of losing a nine-year old son to cancer. Some say he never fully recovered from this, but that it served as a driver of the relentless pursuit […] The post Ode To Charles T Munger appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. We are living in an era of weak, poor and undistinguished political leadership globally, with one notable exception. Scoping the world leadership stage, we tend to look north towards the US, Europe, China and Russia to set the leadership tone for much of the rest of the world. The current crop fails to inspire. Starting with the US, the last President to show true leadership, and at times charismatic leadership, was Barack Obama. I had the privilege of being in the front row of an audience with Obama in August 2006 when was just a first term Senator from Illinois and could see immediately that he had all the hallmarks of Presidentialism. Articulate, intelligent, diplomatic yet firm on the issues, he also struck me as a good human being, noting his modesty and courtesy when meeting with the backroom staff who had arranged his talk in Cape Town. Obama’s leadership is a world away from the crude bluster and threat of the Trump presidency. A Presidency that left the United States a divided nation, with its electoral system severely threatened and its leading position on the world stage tarnished. Arguably President Biden has restored some […] The post The World’s One True Leader appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. Were Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni’ s claims that the private sector is engineering the collapse of government to be true, then those responsible should be arrested for treason. Yet the available evidence is to the contrary. While corrupt elements of local and international business have been and remain culpable in state capture, which is the closest approximation to treasonable conduct, large businesses in South Africa are generally well-governed and compliant corporate citizens. Minister Ntshavheni’ s very public and televised claims were made at the conclusion of a cabinet meeting referencing the findings of the Competition Commission that international and local banks had engaged in collusive and cartel-like practices to manipulate the rand/US dollar exchange rate by fixing bids; bid-offer spreads; the spot exchange rate and the exchange rate at the Financial Information Exchange. While Standard Chartered Bank admitted liability and has been fined some R42 million and Citi bank had settled their fine in 2017, 27 other local and international banks are threatened with prosecution. Notably, the period under investigation is from 2007-2013, during which time the local currency strengthened marginally during 2007 to R6,85/US$, then weakened to R10,363/US$ in 2013. Notably, in […] The post ‘Corrupt yes, treasonous no’ appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. Way back in the 1980s, the British reggae/pop band UB40 recorded the song “One in Ten”. The band named themselves after the Unemployment Benefit Form 40 that queues of unemployed people had to present to the euphemistically named Department of Employment when claiming fortnightly benefits. The “One in Ten” refers to the 10% of unemployed people during the darkest days of the Thatcher era. The song contains the poignant line, “Nobody knows me, but I’m always there, statistical reminder of a world that doesn’t care”. The band has gone on to be gainfully self-employed for decades, earning fame, notoriety and millions in sales along the way. What then would UB40 make of the current state of unemployment in South Africa and particularly that of the youth? It’s hard to comprehend, but the official unemployment figure for 15–24-year-olds is over 45%, though the South African Cities Network places the figure closer to 66,5%. Currently, Nelson Mandela Bay suffers from the highest urban youth unemployment, followed by Mangaung (Bloemfontein) and Ekurhuleni (the East Rand).  Unsurprisingly, Cape Town enjoys the lowest urban youth unemployment rate nationally. Yet, StatsSA contends that South Africa has over 10 million people aged […] The post UB40 and South Africa’s Unemployed Youth appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. The challenges facing our natural world are broad and deep, but what is driving this threat and what can be done? The first and most obvious driver is the loss of biodiversity. Over the past fifty years, human actions have altered three quarters of the Earth’s land-based environment and two thirds of our marine environment. The 300% growth in the demand for and production of crops over the past fifty years has significantly reduced the land available to wildlife. This loss of grassland is on par with the loss of tropical rainforest yet receives very little attention. This also has a negative impact on carbon emissions which are released when grassland is ploughed up. Of course, this problem links directly to population growth and what we consume as a food source. There is growing awareness of the environmental impact of cattle raising (methane production), deforestation and the fact that the production of this protein source is far more resource intensive than other foods. Moreover, food waste has serious environmental impacts that need to be addressed for the sake of sustainability and social equity. The second related problem is the challenge of the intensive extraction of […] The post Our natural Environment – Are We Doomed Or Determined To Win? appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An Article By Ian Kilbride. It was always going to be ugly, but the November Medium-Term Budget Policy Statement was a stinker. The one thing markets look for, no matter how bad the budget, is a confident delivery. The MTBPS was anything but confident. In fact, it was poorly delivered, lacked confidence and conviction and left the markets and business looking for direction. At a minimum, government must lead and provide direction, particularly Treasury. Instead, business was left to take in and deal with the bad news, while reading the tea leaves of future fiscal and monetary policy. Indeed, one of the few pointers towards the February 2024 budget is R15 billion of tax increases are heading our way. With business and the tax compliant consumer already tapped out, it is difficult to see how future increases in personal income tax rates, corporate tax or VAT can be justified or sustained under current economic conditions. But before discussing the substance of the MTBPS a few other issues bear noting. The first point to note was that it was late. Such is the state of the country’s finances, that the MTBPS was in fact due to be delivered a week earlier […] The post MTBPS – The Bad, The Ugly And Very Little Good appeared first on Ian Kilbride.

An article by Ian Kilbride. Pusillanimous, supine, flaccid and timid are reasonable descriptors of much of the business sector when dealing with politics and government. It is time for this to change. Of course, business is far from homogenous across its vast range of sectors, but all share a common interest in operating in a stable, predictable, balanced and well-governed policy environment. Currently, this is absent. This alone provides grounds for greater political engagement by business. Becoming more political needs to be unpacked of course. This could manifest itself in a number of ways. Business could, for example, become more partisan in its private and public support for a favoured political party. After all, the current ruling party operates in a tripartite alliance with organised labour through COSATU and its SACP fellow travellers. Why then should business not align itself publicly with a political party whose policies are avowedly business friendly, rather than socialist, populist and business destructive? Surely this is self-evident? Well, not quite, as the overarching fear shared by all major businesses in becoming more political is that of retribution, victimisation and marginalisation by government.   Yet today, business has less to fear from a government backlash than […] The post Why Business Should Become More Political appeared first on Ian Kilbride.