A good week for Fani Titi

A good week for Fani Titi

A 30% increase in your share price year to date, in this market? It’s fair to say Investec has lagged its peers in banking for a long time, but no longer. Its shares are, in fact, up 165% over five years — compared with peer-of-the-realm FirstRand, which has gained a distinctly dim 53%. Sure, announcing a R7bn share buyback over the next 18 months can only help plump up the stock, but CEO Fani Titi can point to any one metric to justify his pay package this year —  return on equity: up; loans: up; costs: down; bum businesses bought under former management: gone. 

A bad week for Bheki Cele

Bheki Cele has taken his hat into full cowboy mode. The police minister imagines himself as a Dodge City sheriff with his “shoot first and ask questions later” idea of law enforcement. It’s not just chilling, it’s also childish: that the way to deal with outlaws is to follow the script of those old Hollywood Westerns of many childhoods. We now know that when the gun smoke cleared, little had been achieved in establishing law and order — indeed, it had been distorted. Policing in South Africa is more about community service and nothing to do with skop, skiet en donner.