Author: Gugu Lourie
Ralph Mupita, the boss of Africa’s largest mobile phone firm MTN, was paid R84.2 million in the 2021 financial year. The total package of R84.2 million was made up of a R15.4 million salary and a R28.9 million in short-term incentives, plus more than R37.7 million in reflected long term incentive bonus. Mupita was paid R36 million in 2020. The company informed investors that the difference in Mupita’s remuneration received in 2021 compared to 2020 was attributed to improved performance outcomes between the two years and his promotion to group CEO effective from 1 September 2020. Tsholofelo Molefe, MTN’s Group Chief…
JSE-listed technology group SilverBridge is likely to delist from the JSE if UK-based private equity firm Rox Equity Partners’s unsolicited offer is accepted by shareholders. Rox has tabled a revised R2.00 a share offer to buy SiilverBridge and delist it from the JSE. The private equity firm had previously offered R1.525/share to buy the company. The implementation of the Offer is subject to fulfilment or waiver by no later than 17h00 on 31 August 2022. Rox is a private equity investment holding company headquartered in the United Kingdom taking material interests in established global companies at the forefront of disrupting…
The South African government’s plan to have every household getting 10GB of free data a month appears to be a ‘pipedream’ for now. Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies Khumbudzo Ntshavheni promised that the government would provide 10GB of free data to every household in South Africa regardless of income level. She made the promise during a joint State of the Nation debate on Tuesday, 15 February 2022. The basic data allocation will be similar to the provision of essential municipal water and electricity services to needy households. In a written response to parliamentary questions from Zandile Majozi of the Inkatha Freedom…
South African government institutions must use the Post Office so that the state doesn’t have to bail out the operator of the postal services, according to a new draft Bill published for public comment on Wednesday. The South African Post Office SOC Ltd Amendment Bill calls on government institutions which include national and provincial departments, national and provincial government components, and municipalities are encouraged to utilise services offerings by the Post Office and its infrastructure in the delivery of their services. The draft Bill also calls for government institutions to set-aside certain services to be provided by the Post Office…
Cool Ideas is ranked first among South Africa’s Internet Services Providers (ISPs) with a median download speed of 46.05 Mbps, followed by Afrihost and WebAfrica, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Tuesday. Ookla, which owns and operates the popular speedtest.net Internet speed testing service, has published its latest Speedtest Global Index rankings for South Africa for the first quarter of 2022, revealing that Webafrica and Cool Ideas had the lowest latency at 4 ms. Consistency Score In measuring the consistency of each fixed broadband provider’s performance, we found that Cool Ideas had the highest Consistency Score in South Africa…
MTN is ranked first among South Africa’s mobile operators with a median download speed of 51.76 Mbps, followed by Vodacom and Telkom, a report by speed test service Ookla revealed on Tuesday. Ookla, which owns and operates the popular speedtest.net Internet speed testing service, has published its latest Speedtest Global Index rankings for South Africa for the first quarter of 2022, showing that Telkom had the lowest latency at 19 ms. Fastest Mobile Providers Speedtest Intelligence reveals MTN was the fastest mobile operator among top providers in South Africa in Q1 2022 with a median download speed of 51.76 Mbps. Latency Calculating…
FIFA is getting into the streaming service business with a soccer version of Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime. The service is free. The first slate of FIFA+ Originals will feature Ronaldinho, Dani Alves, Ronaldo Nazário, Romelu Lukaku, Lucy Bronze and Carli Lloyd, among others. Launching today, FIFA+ will provide access to live football matches from every corner of the world, interactive games, news, tournament information, ground-breaking, unrivalled video content delivering truly global storytelling around the men’s and women’s game and much more. FIFA is the first sports federation ever to offer such an extensive streaming and content experience to its…
Capitec Bank announced today that funeral plan income soared by 39% to R906 million in 2022 versus R650 million in the previous year. The banking group attributed the rise in funeral plan income to the continued success of the funeral product which increased the number of active policies. As of 28 February 2022, the active book was 1.7 million policies in 2022 financial year compared to 1.2 million policies in 2021. Capitec Bank said the average active funeral book for the current year was about 500 000 policies more than the prior year. “The substantial growth in the average active…
Capitec Bank revealed that its retail clients using digital channels swelled by 17% or 1.9 million new customers to 10.5 million for the year to end-February 2022 versus 8.6 million in 2021. “Active digital users of the banking app, USSD channel, internet banking or a combination of digital channels increased by 17% to 10.1 million, the digital bank informed investors today. Capitec added that clients performed 1.4 billion digital transactions for the year, an increase of 27% versus R800 million in 2021. “We encourage our clients to make use of digital channels to manage their banking costs,” said Capitec. The…
Epic Games announced today a $2 billion or R29 billion round of funding to advance the company’s vision to build a place for kids to play in the metaverse. This round includes investments from existing investor Sony Group Corporation as well as KIRKBI, the family-owned holding and investment company behind The LEGO Group, with each party investing $1 billion or R14.5 billion respectively. “As we reimagine the future of entertainment and play we need partners who share our vision. We have found this in our partnership with Sony and KIRKBI,” said Tim Sweeney, CEO and Founder, Epic Games. “This investment…