In line with the Swahili proverb that when elephants fight it is the grass that suffers, Group Five and Allan Gray are trampling over retail investors. If ever there was a case for calling "monopoly capital", this is it. As much as the global financial crisis was not caused by retail investors, pity the small guy who is being trampled to death by monopolies that are part of oligopolies, in other words, capital ruled by corporations, fund managers and pension funds. In the case of Group Five, the diversified construction company has much to answer for after Allan Gray asked it to replace five nonexecutive directors in mid-May.There is something to that cynical economists’ joke about the difference between a recession and a depression in news that the JSE plans to retrench up to 60 of its personnel. You know the old joke that defines a recession as your neighbour losing her job and a depression when you are losing yours. Along the same line, we could call it a recession when a company...

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