Shoprite share price leaps as Christo Wiese talks of merger with Steinhoff
THE Shoprite share price leapt more than 4% after Christo Wiese said it would be a "natural development" for international retailer Steinhoff to take over Africa’s biggest supermarket chain.Wiese is the biggest shareholder in Shoprite and Steinhoff.If the companies merge it would pull together his retail assets under one roof following Steinhoff’s acquisition in 2014 for nearly $6bn of Wiese’s budget clothing retailer Pepkor, creating a global giant worth at least R400bn."People will speculate about that," he said in a rare interview on Tuesday at his modest offices in the northern Cape Town industrial suburb of Parow."People know that I am 75 years old, and I fortunately have a son who is in business with me, but as a family we are continually looking at consolidating our business interests," he said."So it would be in a way a natural development."Since Steinhoff’s Pepkor acquisition, some analysts have wondered if Wiese, Shoprite’s chief executive Whitey Basson and Steinhoff’s Mar...
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