Meet Natie Kirsh, Africa’s oldest billionaire, who lost everything then built back up
In the mid 1980s, Natie Kirsh watched the empire he had spent years building slip from his hands.
The South African businessman controlled one of the country’s largest retail and distribution groups. His companies employed more than 40,000 people, owned some of South Africa’s best known retail brands and accounted for a significant share of the consumer goods market.
Then it unravelled.
A combination of debt, a worsening economic crisis and a corporate structure that ultimately favoured his partner, Sanlam, stripped him of control. The fortune disappeared. So did the influence.
“I lost my fortune and the stature that came with controlling the country’s largest trading operation,” Kirsh later recalled.
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Most business careers do not recover from losses of that scale.
Kirsh’s did.
Four decades later, the 94-year-old
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