Wealth

These are the richest people in South Africa after a turbulent 2022

Staff Writer

 ·8 Dec 2022

Data from Forbes’ real-time ranking of billionaires shows that some of South Africa’s wealthiest people have experienced a decline in their net worth in 2022, led by Johann Rupert, who is a billion dollars poorer.

Despite Rupert’s luxury goods group Richemont’s JSE shares climbing by a record 84% in January 2022, as resilient pandemic sales buoyed the sector, it now sits on a year-to-date decline of 3.93%.

Four of South Africa’s well-known billionaires, including Rupert, Capitec founder Michiel le Roux, mining boss Patrice Motsepe, and media mogul Koos Bekker, have less money than they had in January 2022, while former diamond magnate Nicky Oppenheimer’s net worth moved up by $0.6 billion.

Despite losing money in 2022, almost all the aforementioned billionaires have climbed the global rankings – with the exception being Le Roux, who dropped by over 100 places.

The fact that these South African billionaires have gained in the rankings while experiencing a drop in their net worth points to a wider trend in global billionaires’ fortunes dwindling in 2022 – at least to a greater extent than those in South Africa.

The below table shows where South Africa’s billionaires’ fortunes sit at the start of 2022 compared to the end of 2022.

Given the current rankings, Johann Rupert firmly maintains his position as South Africa’s richest man, with the Bloomberg Billionaire Index also placing his net worth of an estimated $10.8 billion ($11.7 billion in January), which is still well above Nicky Oppenheimer’s $8.5 billion fortune ($8.0 billion in January).

It’s important to note that Forbes and Bloomberg use different metrics to calculate net worth, causing some discrepancies. However, both rankings and lists put Johann Rupert squarely at the top for local billionaires.

Rupert is one of South Africa’s best-known billionaires, and while he holds stakes in several South African and international companies, a notable mention for 2022 is his investment holding company Remgro.

Remgro released its annual results for 2022 on 27 September 2022, which revealed that the company more than doubled its earnings  – reporting a 125% increase in headline earnings per share (HEPS) to R11.51 for the year.

More interestingly, Remgro founded The Energy Exchange after it realised that energy security in South Africa poses a threat to its investee companies – which has now been awarded an electricity trading license by the National Energy Regulator of South Africa (Nersa).

The Energy Exchange joins PowerX, Enpower, and Etana as licensed traders between electricity generators, distributors, or large consumers.

Remgro has performed relatively well, with a year-to-date increase of 4.5% compared with the JSE all-share index sitting at a year-to-date gain of only 1.3%.

Leading Forbes’ billionaire rankings is South African-born Tesla CEO Elon Musk, with a net worth of $199 billion, followed by France’s Bernard Arnault with $184 billion in second which is then followed by India’s infrastructure and commodities tycoon Gautam Adani with a net worth of $135 billion in third.

Jeff Bezos, the founder and chairman of Amazon, held the number one spot on Forbes’ billionaire list for four years before Musk overtook him, and now sits fourth – with a net worth of $117.5 billion.

However, while Musk sits on the throne as the world’s richest man, his fortune dropped significantly in 2022, as he had an estimated worth of $304.2 billion in January – losing ten times what Rupert is worth over the course of 2022. He even briefly dipped to the second spot this week before recovering the number-one ranking.

According to Forbes, the main culprit for Musk’s drop in fortune was his $44 billion hostile takeover bid for Twitter.

After trying to back out for months, his estimated 82% stake in Twitter was worth nearly 40% less than what he paid for it, according to Forbes’ estimates based on an index of publicly traded social media companies.

The deal weighed heavily on Tesla’s stock for the better part of six months as investors worried about Musk’s distraction and financing of the transaction, Forbes said.

Luckily for Musk, he quietly amassed a 9% stake in Twitter before he announced his offer to buy the company, and he was able to fund part of his acquisition with $13 billion of debt on Twitter’s balance sheet – which helped stem his losses on the deal, Forbes added.

Read: These are the wealthiest cities in the world – and where Cape Town and Joburg fit in