Naspers suddenly in the spotlight in China
The company is receiving attention in China since the sale of shares in Tencent and the uncertainty this has caused
Remarkably, given that it is the single largest shareholder in China’s most valuable company, Naspers has never been given a mention in the media of that country. Until, that is, the day after it offloaded 190m Tencent shares. "Tencent drops 4% on Naspers’s stake-cut plan", shouted the headline in the business section of China Daily. For many among the former Naspers board it may have been a chilling confirmation of why they were right to fight to prolong undisputed control over the company; why for so long they treated the N-shareholders as hangers-on with few rights. For much of the past 15 years it has been important for the Chinese that Naspers did not exhibit all the characteristics of a listed entity; that the executive team and controlling shareholders behind the Tencent acquisition were not susceptible to the normal cut-and-thrust of listed life and that they were not likely to be booted out in a hostile shareholder battle such as that threatened by Jannie Mouton in 2006. Th...
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