{"id":292022,"date":"2019-01-02T17:30:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T15:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=292022"},"modified":"2019-01-02T17:12:43","modified_gmt":"2019-01-02T15:12:43","slug":"the-4-richest-people-in-south-africa-at-the-start-of-2019-and-how-much-money-they-lost-last-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/292022\/the-4-richest-people-in-south-africa-at-the-start-of-2019-and-how-much-money-they-lost-last-year\/","title":{"rendered":"The 4 richest people in South Africa at the start of 2019 – and how much money they lost last year"},"content":{"rendered":"

2018 saw at least three super wealthy South Africans lose their Forbes-certified dollar billionaire status during the course of the year.<\/p>\n

While seven South African billionaires were listed in the 2017 Forbes Billionaire ranking, only five made the cut in 2018 – with one more dropping from the live rankings before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

The remaining billionaires, South Africa’s four richest people – Nicky Oppenheimer, Johann Rupert, Koos Bekker and Patrice Motsepe – were also not spared from heavy losses during the year.<\/p>\n

Now starting in 2019, these four super wealthy businessmen are worth a combined $17 billion (R246.5 billion at current rates), having lost $3 billion<\/a><\/strong> (R43.5 billion) since the start of 2018.<\/p>\n

Luxury good magnate, Johann Rupert, was the biggest loser according to Forbes’ metrics, accounting for $1.9 billion (R27.6 billion) of the lost wealth.<\/p>\n

Allan Gray, mining magnate Desmond Sacco, and Apsen Pharma head Stephen Saad were the billionaire ‘casualties’ of 2018.<\/p>\n

Saad, who cracked the official Forbes ranking in March 2018 but dropped off by the close of the year, had a particularly challenging time, with Aspen Pharmacare’s stock losing half of its value in 2018, on the back of mounting debt and the sale of the group’s infant milk business.<\/p>\n

With the group’s stock tumble, he is no longer ranked among South Africa’s dollar billionaires. At the start of 2018, he had a net worth of $1.2 billion.<\/p>\n

This is how the country’s richest fared over the past 12 months.<\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
#<\/th>\nBillionaire<\/th>\nJanuary 2018 (US$bn)<\/th>\nJanuary 2019 (US$bn)<\/th>\nChange (%)<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
180<\/td>\nNicky Oppenheimer<\/td>\n7.7<\/td>\n7.6<\/td>\n-1.3%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
318<\/td>\nJohann Rupert<\/td>\n7.1<\/td>\n5.2<\/td>\n-26.8%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
986<\/td>\nKoos Bekker<\/td>\n2.8<\/td>\n2.2<\/td>\n-21.4%<\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1143<\/td>\nPatrice Motsepe<\/td>\n2.4<\/td>\n2.0<\/td>\n-16.7%<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Read:\u00a0How South Africa\u2019s top 40 companies performed in 2018<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2018 saw at least three super wealthy South Africans lose their Forbes-certified dollar billionaire status during the course of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":180045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9880],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-292022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wealth","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292022"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":292040,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292022\/revisions\/292040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}