View from the C-Suite

In this weekly feature Michael Avery gets up close and personal with South Africa’s business and political economy leaders, to uncover what makes them tick, keeps them up at night and keeps them going through the Covid storm. Michael Avery’s guest this week has made his way through FirstRand group to become the CEO of one of the largest listed REITS in the country. As Chief Risk Officer at WesBank, he was the Head of Credit for FNB Corporate Property Finance, and also as Credit Risk Manager at both BoE Bank Limited and Nedbank Limited and he was a Director at Loubser du Plessis Consulting Proprietary Limited. He is now CEO of Attacq, The company, which owns the 131,000m² Mall of Africa, the largest shopping mall yet built in a single phase in SA, and developer of Waterfall City. But Attacq also has exposure to neighbourhood and convenience shopping centres which helped to soften the crashing fall Attacq took in the second half of its financial year, in which the landlord saw its assets lose R1.7bn, or 8.6%, in value. Melt Hamman, shares his plans to navigate through a brutally tough time in REIT land.