Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste is a hard man to pin down – not surprising given the company now trades out of 32 countries. Business Day caught up with him after this week’s listing of Steinhoff Africa Retail (Star). This is an extract from that interview. A lot of people believe Steinhoff’s machinations of the past two years are geared towards what Christo Wiese wants. What would you say? Firstly, I feel quite insulted because I would have thought after 29 years driving the ship myself that that’s not a label I would have picked up when I’m in my fifties … maybe when I was in my twenties. I met Christo in January 1982, when I was 21. I was doing my articles and we were his private company’s auditors. After I joined Claus Daun and we started with our journey, we had a 25-year gap… [Later] I was personally, after Jannie Mouton, the biggest shareholder in PSG for many years and Christo had a big shareholding in KWV and PSG made a bid for KWV in the mid-2000s …. the bid failed and after t...

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