BizNews Rational Radio

Rational Radio

Rational Radio is the weekly business news show hosted by BizNews editor Alec Hogg. It runs for around an hour and features leading commentators from the investment and financial world, including regular guest David Shapiro.
Weekly English South Africa Business News · Investing
421 Episodes
360 – 380

Prologue to a Crash: Nene on why he resisted Zuma's nuclear folly

Listening to yesterday’s testimony by South African finance minister Nhlanhla Nene was riveting. It also forces the rational mind to ponder where the country would be if this modest man from rural KwaZulu Natal hadn’t stood up against the financial wrecking of former president Jacob Zuma and his cronies. The…
4 Oct 2018 24 min

Adrian Lackay: How Tom Moyane used lawyers, media to capture SARS

When future historians chronicle the beacons of resistance during South Africa’s destructive Zupta era, they are sure to be surprised by how much extraordinary courage was displayed by seemingly ordinary people. Adrian Lackay is one of the most obvious examples. Our paths first crossed more than a dozen years ago…
1 Oct 2018 20 min

Unpacking unintended consequences of Elon Musk's $7bn Tesla tweet

It’s been an insane six weeks for South African-born-and-bred super entrepreneur Elon Musk. At about two o clock in the afternoon on Tuesday 7th August, while he was on an aeroplane, the boy from Pretoria launched one of the most expensive tweets of all time. Musk’s assertion that he would…
25 Sep 2018 22 min

Next week 10% tariff, next year 25% - Trump's trade war gets real

Most analysts had discounted the prospect of a trade war between Donald Trump’s America and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. Even when high level talks broke down in May, Trump’s threats were interpreted a massive bluff in a high stakes poker game. He believed China would back down, make the…
19 Sep 2018 13 min

Peter Hain on Mandela, Ramaphosa and white South Africans

It’s always special to visit with Peter Hain, the anti-apartheid icon who had a highly successful half century in British politics. Last time I watched him deliver a killer speech in the House of Lords which smashed any hopes the Guptas had of slinking away into the shadows. This time…
13 Sep 2018 27 min

Bill Browder, Putin's #1 enemy, warns SA: Recoil from Russia

I was first exposed to Bill Browder in 2006, at a hedge fund conference at Nice in the south of France. He was one of the star attractions, his Russia-focused Hermitage Fund, hailed as the best performing money fund in the world. Confident, brash, outspoken, Browder was riding a wave…
6 Sep 2018 37 min

Meet Chris Steyn author of nation-rocking Lost Boys of Bird Island

I’ve always been a huge fan of my former colleague Chris Steyn, having seen close up how she has always made exposing the truth her only priority, regularly speaking out against the powerful on behalf of those without a voice. Much has happened in the few weeks since the publication…
3 Sep 2018 22 min

Johann Rupert's "aha" moment sparks Reinet's R10bn share buyback

South Africa’s leading businessman, Johann Rupert, has taken the empire inherited from his father to another level. In 1988, just three years after joining his father Anton’s industrial group Rembrandt, Rupert junior created Richemont, today one of the world’s top luxury goods businesses. When Richemont restructured a decade ago, its…
28 Aug 2018 13 min

Elon's $420 a share bubble has burst: Why Tesla isn't going private anytime soon

Earlier this week, Elon Musk’s biggest fan in the investment world urged Tesla’s founder to stop his ideas of taking the company private. Catherine Wood of ARK Invest re-iterated her bullish earlier projections in an open letter on the money manager’s website where she reckons the company’s shares will be…
24 Aug 2018 25 min

Disruptor Rowan Gormley: From Boksburg via Branson to Majestic

When I arrived for our interview at his farm near Bungay in Suffolk, Rowan Gormley, in shorts and a pink golf shirt, was busy watering plants in a small greenhouse. There was no indication from him that a few hours later he’d be hosting 300 people in a marquee set…
21 Aug 2018 30 min

The whitewashing of Zimbabwe’s ancient history

In the early 1970s, when I was 12 years old, my British immigrant father married a South African. Part of his integration was visiting her siblings, one of whom lived with his family in what was then called Fort Victoria, part of then recently independent Rhodesia. Beyond seeing television for…
28 Jul 2018 13 min

Paul O'Sullivan: We'll force Hogan Lovells to come clean on SA State Capture role

I’ve found that travelling South Africans tend to speak more openly. Perhaps it’s a function of being away from home. Whatever the cause, it certainly adds an element of freshness to my interviews here in London. But forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan falls outside that generality. Whether we’ve been together in…
18 Jul 2018 18 min
360 – 380