Naspers chief executive, Koos Bekker, R7bn richer

Naspers chief executive Koos Bekker’s remuneration package, which is currently valued at more than R7-billion before tax for the past five years, has broken all previous pay records for JSE executives and is expected to hold the record for the foreseeable future.

Koos Bekker: Naspers Chief Executive

The 74 percent surge in the Naspers N share price over the past 12 months, combined with Bekker’s unique remuneration arrangement, has generated several billions of rands of potential profits for Bekker.

At a current price of R795, the 11.7 million shares that Bekker was awarded as remuneration for the five years to the end of March are worth R9.3bn. The cost to Bekker of the shares is just over R2bn.

This puts the value of his remuneration package significantly ahead of any other executive on the JSE, including executives of companies that have their primary listing on an international bourse.

Naspers’s annual report for financial 2013 reveals that 3.9 million shares were released to Bekker on March 31 this year and are being held in reserve for him in the company’s share incentive scheme. “This is the final tranche of his five-year contract entered into on April 1, 2008,” the Naspers remuneration report says.

In terms of his unique remuneration contract Bekker does not receive any salary, bonus, car scheme or medical or pension contributions from the company. Instead, in 2008 he was awarded 11.7 million shares, which vested in three annual tranches of 3.9 million at the end of years three, four and five.

The 11.7 million shares were awarded to Bekker at the ruling price at the beginning of his five-year contract, which was around R150. In addition, the price he has to pay is adjusted for inflation.

The first tranche, which was paid out at the end of financial 2011, cost Bekker R167 a share. The second tranche, at the end of financial 2012, cost Bekker R176 a share. The shares allocated to Bekker in March this year cost him R185 each.

This means that the total cost to Bekker for the 11.7 million shares was just over R2bn, compared with the current market value of those shares of R9.3bn. So, Bekker is currently showing a pretax profit of R7.2bn on his unique five-year remuneration package.

This is Bekker’s third five-year contract with Naspers.

In terms of the first contract, entered into in 1997, Bekker was allocated 3.3 million shares, which were released to him in three tranches ending in December 2003.

The dotcom collapse in 2001 highlighted the high-risk element of the arrangement and there was little value in the Naspers shares by the time they were awarded to Bekker.

In the second five-year contract, Bekker was allocated 4.4 million shares in 2003 at R21.40 a share. The shares were again released to Bekker in three tranches, with the price adjusted for inflation.

The steady upward trajectory of the share price during this five-year period meant that Bekker secured considerable profits.

The third contract, which has just expired, is by far the most valuable in terms of the number of shares awarded as well as the price appreciation.

The single most important factor in the surge in the Naspers share price in recent years is attributed to the performance of, and expectations for, China-based Tencent. Tencent is an acquisition that Bekker, who is regarded as having more guanxi (contacts) in China than most foreigners, championed back in 2004.

In addition to the 11.7 million shares, Bekker holds 4.7 million shares awarded to him in 2002 in terms of the rules of the Naspers share incentive trust. At the current share price, these 16.4 million shares are worth R13bn. The dividend payment on these shares will earn Bekker, and cost Naspers, R63 million a year.

Bekker appears to have sold the 7.7 million Naspers shares he was allocated in terms of the first two five-year contracts.

Supporters of Bekker’s remuneration contract argue that it is an appropriate arrangement given the critical entrepreneurial role he has played in building up the company.

Critics counter that the arrangement is unnecessarily generous and has contributed to the high-risk aspect of the share price.

The annual report does not indicate that Bekker has to hold onto the shares beyond the end of his five-year contract. They point to the fact that Naspers has a higher market capitalisation than Sasol, although its earnings-generating ability is significantly lower.

Remuneration consultants note that the arrangement has essentially de-linked Bekker from the group’s remuneration policies as set out by the remuneration committee. – IOL

Koos Bekker R7bn richer in 5 short years

Who is Naspers?

The bewildered herd must be governed by a specialized class whose interests reach beyond the locality. (Walther Lippmann)

Knowledge is power… and power is money. In order to make big money, you need big money.

The first big fund to invest in Naspers was Comerica Foreign Equity. This fund is run by World Asset Management, the investment arm of HSBC. This bank has its main (private) office on Tortola, the largest of the British Virgin Islands.

And guess where Naspers’s investment arm, MIH Holdings Limited, is located? Yes, in the exact same street of this tax-haven of the (mostly) British elite. Just think about the above every time you pay a small fortune to watch M-Net, SuperSport, DSTV, et cetera.

Now, HSBC is the world’s 3rd largest bank with $2.36 trillion in assets. Formerly known as Hong Kong Shanghai Bank Corporation, HSBC is one of the most unscrupulous banks ever. It has been the cash cow of the British elite since its inception as a repository for British Crown opium proceeds accrued during the Chinese Opium Wars.

Armed with a royal charter, Lord Shelbourne started the Chinese opium trade in 1783 with merchants from the East India Company. Shelbourne’s main spin-doctor was Adam Smith. The latter worked for the East India Company, which was formed from the slave-trading Levant Company and later became known as Chatham House. The latter is home to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA), the second most influential think tank in the world.

The RIIA was founded in 1920. Its American sister institute, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), was founded one year later. Walther Lippmann, the Pulitzer-Prize essayist, journalist and mass-media genius was one of the founding members of the CFR. But more about him later. Needless to say, these two organizations, the RIIA and CFR, work hand in hand.

Now, the CFR is run by some of the best brains in America. They are truly exceptional people. They basically run the State Department, the CIA and are connected to nearly everybody that matters in the business and academia in America, and globally.

The CIA operates under the cover of various organizations when it comes to furthering America’s strategic and economic interests. The Ford Foundation is one of the main fronts of the CIA (i.e. the CFR).

In June 1985, this foundation hosted the first ever meeting between the ANC and the Broederbond (i.e. the NP).

The conference took place in Glen Cove, Long Island on June 1st. The main players were Professor JP De Lange (Head of the Broederbond) and ANC officials, Thabo Mbeki, Mac Maharaj and Seretse Choadi.

This meeting did not produce the results the CFR were hoping for. So they summoned the (economic) artillery, David Rockefeller.

Along with being a CFR director for 46 years, David Rockefeller served as chairman of the board from 1970-85 and was the organization’s honorary chairman till 2001. During this time, he was also chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank.

On 31st July 1985, Chase Manhattan decided not to roll over South Africa’s debt. Apparently Pik Botha’s traitor heart nearly stopped beating: “I will never forget the night of July 31 when [Minister of Finance] Barend du Plessis phoned me … [He said]: ‘Pik, I must tell you that the country is facing inevitable bankruptcy … The process has started.’” (source).

The rest is history.

So what has this got to do with Naspers? Well, it just shows that Naspers is just another appendage of interest groups beyond the borders of South Africa. In other words, it does not serve the interests of South Africans. But then, neither do other media giants in South Africa.

Caxton/CTP’s chairman in the early 1990s was Van Zyl Slabbert, who also became the chairman of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Slabbert was the useful idiot of CFR member George Soros. The latter, through his Open Society Foundation, sponsored Slabbert and super-useful idiot Max Du Preez… especially with his anti-Afrikaner Vrye Weekblad newspaper.

So, every time you hear about the Davos Afrikaner called Koos Bekker, the big boss of the 33rd largest media company in the world called Naspers (worth R344 billion or $34,88 billion) just know that he is just another witting puppet on an Anglo-American string.

He is just like those rich Boer farmers who became hensoppers during the Anglo-Boer War… selling out their own people purely for profit. Nothing more, nothing less.

Meaning that the “Who is Naspers?” question is not really that interesting. The really interesting question is the “why” behind Naspers.

Answering this question will take us through the wonderful worlds of Baudrillard (e.g. see my article Mandela’s Empire), Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the Washington Consensus, Bretton Woods, Walther Lippmann’s Public Opinion… all the way back to Edmund Husserl`s phenomenology (e.g. see my article Why Mandela).

It is a fact that people can only make sense of Reality through “ideal meanings”. Those ideal “pictures in your head” prevent you, more often than not, to “… come to judgment by critical thinking” (Walther Lippmann).

Journalism is “intelligence work” and journalists are a link between policymakers and the public, according to Lippmann.

Meaning that journalists (and the media companies that employ them, e.g. Naspers) always sanitize the Truth at the behest of their pay-masters…

By Dan Roodt

Who is Naspers?