{"id":809990,"date":"2025-02-06T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-02-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=809990"},"modified":"2025-08-19T15:23:57","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:23:57","slug":"all-the-major-companies-that-billionaire-johann-rupert-controls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/809990\/all-the-major-companies-that-billionaire-johann-rupert-controls\/","title":{"rendered":"All the major companies that billionaire Johann Rupert controls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Johann Rupert is the richest man in South Africa, with control over three large holding companies – Richemont, Remgro and Reinet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest figures from Forbes show that Rupert is worth $13.6 billion (roughly R255 billion) – making him the richest person in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rupert is the chairman of the Swiss Luxury goods firm Compagnie Financiere Richemont.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richemont was founded by Rupert in 1988 via the spin-off of the international assets owned by Rembrandt Group Limited of South Africa, which is now known as Remgro. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rembrandt was established by Rupert’s father Anton in the 1940s and was involved in gold, diamond, and luxury goods investments. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rupert is also the chairman of Remgro, which primarily focuses on local investments in South Africa. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also chairs Reinet, which is an investment holding company based in Luxembourg. Reinet previously housed Rupert’s major shareholding in British American Tobacco but has now seen a major strategic shift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Rupert chairs all of these holding companies, he is still a minority shareholder in most of these organisations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, he maintains control of these companies via controversial capital structures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richemont<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Richemont is the largest company that Rupert has control over, with the Swiss Luxury brand owning jewellers Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Buccellati. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It also houses specialist watchmakers A. Lange & S\u00f6hne, Baume & Mercier, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Officine Panerai, Piaget, Roger Dubuis, and Vacheron Constantin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As per Richemont’s website, Richemont has 537,582,089 A registered shares, with a par value of CHF 1.00 each, and 537,582,089 B registered shares, with a par value of CHF 0.10 each, in issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The primary listing Richemont A shares are listed and traded on the SIX Swiss exchange, whereas the secondary listing Richemont A shares are listed and traded on the JSE.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notably, the B shares are not publically listed and represent 9.1% of the equity of the Company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 537,582,089 Richemont B registered shares are held by Compagnie Financi\u00e8re Rupert, which is controlled by Rupert. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compagnie Financi\u00e8re Rupert is the only significant shareholder, with 3% or more of the voting rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the 6,418,850 Richemont \u2018A\u2019 shares and 537,582,089 Richemont \u2018B\u2019 registered shares he owns represent only 10% of the equity of the company, he controls 51% of the company’s voting rights. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, Richemont has a dual-class structure, with different classes of common stock outstanding having more voting powers than others. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This gives one group of shareholders, in this case Rupert, effective control of the company even though they only hold a minority share in the company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The CFA Institute has strongly advocated against dual-class voting structures as they give disproportionate power and potentially override the interests of the majority of shareholders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the potential fears over the class structures, investors have been pilling into Richemont following its latest update. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richemont’s market cap recently surpassed 100 billion Swiss francs (R2 trillion) for the first time amidst better-than-expected sales. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Richemont’s latest update for the quarter that ended December showed that consumers in the Americas and Europe, with Richemont\u2019s jewellery brands faring strongly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results also gave a boost to the wider luxury sector on optimism that the industry is recovering after weak demand in recent years, especially in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Remgro <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Looking at South Africa, Rupert also has large amounts of control of Remgro. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remgro as an asset manager has large shareholdings in several prominent South African companies, including Mediclinic, OUTsurance, Seacom, CIVH, Heineken Beverages, FirstRand and the Blue Bulls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As chairman, Rupert controls 7,553,865 A shares out of the total 529,217,007 shares available, representing about 1.4% of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rupert and his son Anton Rupert Jnr. also hold 7,551,005 shares in Remgro through an associate company, representing 1.4% of the company\u2019s issued share capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, like Richemont, Rupert, through Rupert Beleggings Proprietary Limited, is the only shareholder of the 39,056,987 B shares. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

B ordinary shares are entitled to 43.09% of the total votes of shareholders of the company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Combined, Rupert holds roughly 46% of Remgro. Although this is not a majority, it still gives Rupert huge control of Remgro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remgro had a challenging time in its latest full financial year ended on 30 June 2024, with the group’s headline earnings decreasing by 20% from R7,056 million to R5,647 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said that the challenging operating environment contributed to the loss, with Heineken Beverages contributing a R297 million loss.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has a market cap of R75 billion, making it the smallest of the three holding companies. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Reinet <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Finally, the Anton Rupert Trust holds 48.8 million ordinary shares in Reinet Investments, which represents a 24.93% shareholding of the company\u2019s total issued share capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ruperts also hold the 1,000 management shares issued by Reinet, which gives them broad power to manage the company as General Partners. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinet was often seen as Rupert’s forgotten child, with it previously holding the vast majority of his BAT shareholding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, earlier this year, Reintet sold its 43.3 million ordinary shares in BAT for a price of \u00a328.20 per share to institutional investors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This raised gross proceeds of some \u00a31.22 billion ( about R28.3 billion).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This interest in BAT represented 24% of the net asset value of Reinet, which included roughly 48.3 million BAT shares. The other 5 million shares in BAT had already been sold by the start of the year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking with MoneywebNow<\/a>, Sanlam Private Wealth’s Nick Kunze said that the move is interesting, as it opens a lot of cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Rupert is notorious for not giving cash back to shareholders, it will likely be used to strike a deal\/acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Outside of the BAT cash, Reinet’s assets include shareholdings in a majority shareholding in UK-based Pension Insurance Corporation Group and US-based Trilantic Capital Partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reinet’s market cap is currently worth roughly R90 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n

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(BAT shareholding sold in early January)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Johann Rupert may only be a minority shareholder in the companies he chairs, but he still has large amounts of control thanks to voting rights. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":810101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[21065,4088,15580,9653,19951,2591,4665],"class_list":["post-809990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-cartier","tag-firstrand","tag-mediclinic","tag-outsurance","tag-reinet","tag-remgro","tag-richemont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809990","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\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809990"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835440,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809990\/revisions\/835440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}