Braam van Huyssteen, the 53-year-old founder of Tekkie Town, has some pretty unpleasant things to say about the sordid governance at Steinhoff Africa Retail (Star), the company that split off from Steinhoff in 2017. Van Huyssteen is gruff and direct — as you’d expect from a man who built a billion-rand shoe empire from the southern Cape town of Mossel Bay with just R20,000 borrowed from his family in 1989. It’s a story that led to him following in the footsteps of Adrian Gore and Brian Joffe to be picked SA’s entrepreneur of the year in 2011. Van Huyssteen’s bad luck was bumping into Markus Jooste, Steinhoff’s former CEO, on the racetrack years ago. They got on so famously that, in 2016, Steinhoff paid R3.2bn to buy Tekkie Town from Van Huyssteen and the 1,100 staff who owned it. Disastrously, Jooste paid them in Steinhoff shares. More disastrously, a lock-in clause prevented them from selling any of those shares until 2019. As Steinhoff’s stock has plunged 97% since December, you c...
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.
Subscribe now to unlock this article.
Support BusinessLIVE’s award-winning journalism for R129 per month (digital access only).
There’s never been a more important time to support independent journalism in SA. Our subscription packages now offer an ad-free experience for readers.
Cancel anytime.
Questions? Email helpdesk@businesslive.co.za or call 0860 52 52 00. Got a subscription voucher? Redeem it now.