{"id":380065,"date":"2020-03-09T13:07:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T11:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=380065"},"modified":"2020-03-09T13:07:59","modified_gmt":"2020-03-09T11:07:59","slug":"south-africas-richest-people-lost-r6-billion-thanks-to-the-coronavirus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/380065\/south-africas-richest-people-lost-r6-billion-thanks-to-the-coronavirus\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa’s richest people lost R6 billion thanks to the coronavirus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forbes’ daily tracking<\/a> of billionaire wealth shows red across the board – including for South Africa’s super wealthy, who have seen their fortunes decline in line with the global market crash.<\/p>\n

Markets have seen a massive drop<\/a> in the wake of the international coronavirus outbreak, as investors and economists start factoring in the effect the disease has had, and will continue to have on output.<\/p>\n

This is particularly true for the Chinese economy – the second largest in the world – whose manufacturing sector is intricately tied to many countries like South Africa.<\/p>\n

China’s GDP growth for is expected to be cut from around 6% to as low as 4.8% in 2020, due to containment measures in the country, to fight the spread of the virus. This has impacted key industries within China, and with a global slowdown of imports and exports to the region, the knock-on effects have been felt world-wide.<\/p>\n

The effect of the coronavirus outbreak has now been exacerbated by a crash in the global oil price<\/a>, driven by a price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia, which flared up overnight.<\/p>\n

Oil prices crashed 30%, sending related stocks and tied economies into a tailspin.<\/p>\n

The anxiety surrounding the coronavirus outbreak intensified over the weekend as the number of cases and deaths increased, Bloomberg reported.<\/p>\n

“This is starting to look like it could be one of those turning points that marks a generation of investors, like the bursting of the internet bubble in 2000 or the financial crisis in 2008-2009,” it said.<\/p>\n

These issues have sent most markets plummeting – the US S&P 500, Nasdaq and Dow Jones were all down 5%; Japan’s Nikkei fell 5.1%; Australian indices fell over 7%; and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 4.2%. In South Africa, the JSE also fell around 5%, in line with global markets.<\/p>\n

Shares in Sasol fell 45%.<\/p>\n

With most of their wealth tied up in equities and stocks, this global crash has had a major impact on the world’s wealthiest people – especially those tied up in the petrochemical industry.<\/p>\n

Indian billionaire, Mukesh Ambani, lost $5.6 billion overnight, as his stocks in Reliance Industries – which has operations in textiles, petrochemicals and many other sectors – tanked 25% on the back of the recent downturn.<\/p>\n

And,only 35 of the over 2,000 billionaires tracked by Forbes showed gains on Monday.<\/p>\n

South African billionaires<\/strong><\/p>\n

South Africa’s richest lost a combined $370 million (R5.9 billion) in the fallout.<\/p>\n

The biggest loser was luxury goods magnate Johann Rupert, who accounted for $220 million of the total lost.<\/p>\n

The table below outlines the losses:<\/p>\n

\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Billionaire<\/th>\nWealth<\/th>\nChange<\/th>\n%<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
Johann Rupert<\/td>\n$5.6 billion<\/td>\n-$220 million<\/td>\n-3.8%<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Patrice Motsepe<\/td>\n$1.9 billion<\/td>\n-$65 million<\/td>\n-3.4%<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Koos Bekker<\/td>\n$2.3 billion<\/td>\n-$42 million<\/td>\n-1.8%<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Nicky Oppenheimer<\/td>\n$7.6 billion<\/td>\n-$23 million<\/td>\n-0.3%<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Michiel le Roux<\/td>\n$1.1 billion<\/td>\n-$20 million<\/td>\n-1.9%<\/span><\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Total<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/td>\n-$370 million<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Read: How many South Africans are worth more than R450 million<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Forbes’ daily tracking of billionaire wealth is showing red across the board – including for South Africa’s super wealthy, who have seen their fortunes shrink in line with the global market crash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":289544,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9880],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-380065","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\/380065","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=380065"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":380089,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380065\/revisions\/380089"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}