MANY OF SA'S SUPER-RICH ARE BLACK

This is the post for December 27th

My, my - how very interesting - perhaps we should blame this one on 'Apartheid' as well! Let's face facts - if it wasn't for Apartheid, this would, very likely not have happened!

Many of SA's super-rich are black
October 30 2006 at 09:29AM
By Barry Bateman, Cornelia du Plooy and Malgosia Kijko

Nearly half of South Africa's 200 000 very wealthy people are black, according to research by First National Bank (FNB).FNB said its research showed that the wealthy in South Africa are not "old, white retirees". It said "74 percent are business owners, 58 percent are under the age of 45, and 45 percent of the wealthy in South Africa today are black". Black South Africans are the fastest growing group of wealthy individuals. In Pretoria, white former government employees turned entrepreneurs and black public servants are adding to the number of the rich in South Africa.


This was revealed at the launch of FNB's Private Clients facility for the northern region which includes Pretoria, Polokwane and Tzaneen in Limpopo province, and Nelspruit and Secunda in Mpumalanga. FNB Private Clients northern region head Gerhard Combrinck said the service targeted people with an annual income of R750 000 upwards or investible assets of R1-million or more."

In South Africa in general, we have seen more people getting richer which is a function of good economic conditions. "But, the northern region has seen tremendous change in the make-up of its high net worth individuals. "In Pretoria, the most obvious observation is that a great number of former white State officials have moved out of their government jobs and turned to entrepreneurial ventures that are now becoming lucrative, putting them in the wealthy bracket."We are also seeing more black people take senior positions in government and take advantage of Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deals," he said.

Combrink said 18 months ago only 35 percent of high net worth individuals were black. "If this trend continues, and we expect it to accelerate as BEE plays a bigger role in the national economy, we expect that number to climb to 60% within the next two years," he said.

Pieter Grimbeek, of the Bank of England, said the majority of high net worth individuals were older people: "These are the people with available capital to invest in the market,"he said. Most of his high net worth clients were white but a growing number were black", he said.
This article was originally published on page 4 of Pretoria News on October 30, 2006