Lead contenders for Business Maverick’s inaugural Businessperson of the Year would normally be reflected by the institution designed to reflect shareholder’s passions: the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In 2019, the biggest gainers among SA majors were mining companies, particularly gold and platinum companies.

But as per usual, the credit for that goes primarily to the commodities they mine rather than to any great business skill – although of course, positioning a mining company to take advantage of a rising commodity price is a real skill in itself. To some extent, SA’s two platinum majors were beneficiaries of years of painful restructuring, and this year, at last, it came good, with Impala really shooting the lights out and its share price trebling over the year. AngloPlatinum also made impressive gains. Who would have thought at the start of the year that platinum would be the place to be?

The same is somewhat true of the large gold companies. Gold Fields, up 72% this year, and Anglo Gold Ashanti, up 50%. As always, however, the commodity story is complicated. The change in the direction of global interest rates suddenly made gold more appealing, or perhaps, less unappealing, while the unfathomable supply/demand characteristics of the actual performance of mining companies outside of these factors is something of an artistic exercise. What can be said of the gold and platinum industries is that their labour relations somehow worked out in 2019, and credit for that goes to both management and the union leaders.

One person who has really stood out this year was Sibanye Stillwater CEO Neal Froneman. Sibanye was supposed to be the leftover bit after the Gold Fields split, but in a series of lightning M&A moves, including the purchase of US miner Stillwater, the company has become a major international force in its own right.  Froneman also faced down a strike in the gold industry this year, helped secure a wage agreement in the platinum industry and bought Lonmin. These have been gutsy moves. Will they work? Partly by dint of good fortune on the commodity markets mentioned above, they may just. In any event, kudos to Froneman for chutzpah, if nothing else.

There were two companies which really performed so much better than their counterparts in 2019 that their CEOs would in normal years make easy contenders for businessperson of the year: Clicks and Capitec. Clicks’ share price is up 35% over the year, compared to retailers in general who are generally flat or down. That’s an impressive first year for Vikesh Ramsunder who took over on the first day of 2019. He would perhaps be the first to acknowledge that he inherited great businesses from his predecessor David Kneale, who remained involved for most of the year, although Ramsunder was himself part of the team that built the company under Kneale.

In almost exactly the same fashion, Capitec’s share price is up 32% compared to the big banks who are all flat or down. Its been another impressive year for CEO Gerrie Fourie who has led the company for the past five years. The wonder of Capitec is its contrariness; in an age when banks are cutting their branches, Capitec is more branch-dependent than ever, and they’re using that to build a huge client network, now the country’s largest. For those who insist the market never works for the unbanked, Capitec is the retort. Its been a real tour de force.

Yet, for all kinds of reasons, the standout company of the year was Naspers with the unbundling of Multichoice, the listing of Prosus in Holland, and the subsequent battle for Just Eat. The truth is that all of these developments didn’t entirely go the way of the company, yet South Africans sometimes are a little blasé about what’s been achieved here: all other major internet companies around the world are American or Chinese. None are European, or from anywhere in Asia, outside of China. And the very reason the Prosus listing needed to take place was that Naspers has just outgrown the South African stock market. Its been an incredible story.

There are perhaps three reasons why Naspers’ enormous achievement tends to get overlooked. First, the company’s share price is so dominated by its investment in Chinese giant Tencent, it’s actually hard to get a firm grip on everything else going in the company. The second reason is that the company kinda wanted it that way: its very success was partly by cannily going places the Americans were neglecting.

And third, CEO Bob van Dijk’s role has been overshadowed by the company’s talisman Koos Bekker, who remains a powerful, if not dominant force, in his role as Naspers chairman and board member of Prosus. But Van Dijk has been CEO now for five years and the job of taking the company forward is now essentially his, particularly after the Prosus listing.

So how did that go? The truth is, not that well. The share price is down following the listing and the company is still tracking Tencent pretty closely.

The whole logic of the listing was that Prosus would help create a new and more European identity for the group, and gain lots of new European shareholders. But the Chinese company is perhaps dominating more than the designers of the scheme might have hoped, and the tracking between Tencent and Naspers is still pretty tight.

It’s worth noting too that since the listing, Tencent is up and Prosus/Naspers is down, so perhaps it’s not tracking the Chinese company as thoroughly as some would like! The attempt at taking over Just Eat is also tough going, despite the R94-billion the company is putting on the table, with the board of the British company still recommending rival Takeaway’s offer.

Still, it’s early days.

But financially, what the listing has achieved is a value unlock of about $10-billion and that is nothing to be sneezed at. More profoundly, the whole process suggests after years of palming away shareholders’ concerns and hiding behind Naspers’s peculiar shareholder structure, the company has decided to come out into the light, at least a little bit.

Van Dijk deserves credit for that, above all, which is why despite all the headwinds, he gets our vote for Business Maverick’s inaugural Businessperson of the Year. BM