Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week

Bestselling author and broadcast legend Bruce Whitfield returns with a bold new News24 podcast. Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week won’t waste your time. Instead, each episode will focus on the one business news story that will change your world.Listeners will also get investment and personal finance advice from top experts, and the inside track on SA’s most successful hustles. Join us every Thursday at 17:00.

Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week is a business podcast hosted by News24, with 66 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

News24 hosts Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week, a business show with 66 episodes published.

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  Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week

  Why Capitec keeps winning. Plus: The Courier Guy's locker revolution

  Oct 1, 202638 min

  In this episode, Capitec CEO Graham Lee joins Bruce to unpack another extraordinary set of results from South Africa’s most disruptive bank. With 16.5 million digital clients, a cost to income ratio that has dropped to just 36 cents in the rand and business banking growing at over 50%, Capitec continues to defy every sceptic. Lee explains why the branch network is not a cost but a competitive advantage, what fully banked really means and why he is more heavily weighting negative economic scenarios heading into 2027. Craig Pitchers, CEO of The Courier Guy, on the last mile problem that has plagued South African logistics for decades and how 3,500 pickup points, lockers and kiosks are finally starting to solve it. With fuel costs at record highs, doorstep delivery is the most expensive way to move a parcel, and the shift to collection points is not just convenient. It is the future of the industry. Helena Wasserman, editor of News24 Business, on the ports authority finally breaking free from Transnet, Goldfields making a bold half-trillion-rand bid for Australian miner Northern Star to become the world’s second largest gold producer, and the Gautrain getting new operators with fresh promises and French flair. And Meryl Pick of Old Mutual Investment Group on the seismic knock-on effect of the Dangote Refinery IPO for Nigeria’s currency and MTN investors, and whether stock markets always fall in rate hiking cycles.

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  Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week

  Real-time money is changing everything. Is your business keeping up?

  Sep 29, 202624 min

  Most of us have stopped thinking about payments. You tap your card, tap your phone, and walk out. It just works. But behind that two-second tap is one of the most complex and fast-moving infrastructure systems in the modern economy – and it is changing faster than most businesses realise. In this standalone episode of Bruce Whitfield’s Business Week, Bruce sits down with Chris Zietsman, executive head of Capitec Payments, to pull back the curtain on what is actually happening when money moves – and what the next three years are going to look like. Zietsman spent six years at SnapScan, first as CFO and later as CEO, watching South Africa’s payment ecosystem evolve from days of clearing time to card transactions settling in two to three seconds – faster, he notes, than Mexico manages on a good day. He unpacks the PayShap instant payment rail now enabling real-time bank transfers for as little as 20 cents, why Capitec can onboard a new card machine merchant in five minutes in any branch, and how the cost of card transactions has fallen from 3%-4% decade ago to below 1% today. But the most compelling part of the conversation is his prediction about where the next competitive battleground lies: Not speed. Not price. Security. As friction disappears, so does the safety net that used to give defrauded consumers time to stop a transaction. The winners in the next three years, he says, will be the players who use AI and behavioural monitoring to protect clients in real time. You thought you were just tapping your phone. It turns out you were participating in one of the most sophisticated financial systems on Earth. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec. To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here.

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  Episode #65

  Poverty tax, Momentum’s billions and SA’s Formula One gamble

  Sep 23, 202639 minS1

  In this episode, Momentum CEO Jeanette Marais unpacks a standout year, with normalised headline earnings hitting R7 billion ahead of schedule, five business segments crossing R1 billion for the first time, and India emerging as the group’s most exciting long-term growth story after the health insurance joint venture with Aditya Birla Capital turned profitable for the first time in a decade. Eben de Jongh, founder of Skubu, joins Bruce to explain why it is expensive to be poor, and how his refill-based retail concept in Diepsloot is cutting prices by up to 60% through eliminating packaging and buying directly upstream. Four stores in, with a more compact format called Skubu Nyana in development, the model is gaining serious momentum.News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman reflects on Pick'n Pay tapping a former Woolworths executive as its next CEO, Remgro sitting on R22 billion in cash and feeling unusually bullish about South Africa, and Neal Froneman’s serious plans for a Formula One circuit near Malmesbury in the Western Cape. And David Shapiro of Otto 1890 on why AI is now the defensive play in global markets, Nvidia trading at a lower multiple than the S&P 500 despite a R5.5 trillion market cap, and the one thing that keeps him up at night about the sustainability of this market. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec.To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.

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  Episode #64

  Fertiliser to fintech: Omnia feeds Africa, Optasia banks it

  Sep 17, 202635 minS1

  In this episode, Omnia Group CEO Seelan Gobalsamy discusses a record year driven by Africa’s growing food security imperative, with fertiliser demand rising across the continent and a strategy built around becoming the essential input supplier for African farmers. Optasia CEO Salvador Anglada unpacks how the group is making more than a billion credit decisions a month, facilitating $3.5 billion in distributed value in a single half-year, and growing revenue 58% while keeping default rates at 1.3%. Quietly, the fintech has become one of the most significant financial infrastructure companies that most South Africans have never heard of. Gary Booysen of Rand Swiss on what the Reserve Bank rate hold means for SA assets, where he is finding value in a market that has run hard, and why AI infrastructure remains his one constant theme.And News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman on the rand selling off after the rate hold, Woolworths’ new CEO making his first moves, and what a bumper week for financial services results tells us about the broader economy. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec. To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.

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  Episode #62

  FirstRand’s Vilakazi cleans up after R17bn UK hit

  Sep 10, 202630 minS1

  In this episode, FirstRand CEO Mary Vilakazi unpacks results that look worse than they are. Reported earnings fell 5% after an R11.4 billion provision for the UK motor finance scandal, but strip that out and normalised earnings from continuing operations grew 13%, with return on equity at 24%. The UK business is being sold, and FirstRand is placing its next big bet on Optasia, a fintech platform targeting the unbanked across Africa. Andrew Dunn of DNI tells one of South Africa’s most unexpected entrepreneurial stories. Watching bread trucks return idle by midmorning at Premier Foods, he noticed that every outlet buying bread was also selling airtime and SIM cards with no efficient way to restock. That single observation became the foundation for a business now spanning connectivity, devices, eSIMs and fintech, touching millions of South Africans in the informal economy. Chantal Marx of FNB Wealth and Investments on a bumper week of financial services results, why South African insurers and banks keep outperforming a moribund economy, and what Anton Rupert Jr’s elevation at Richemont really signals. And News24 Business editor Helena Wasserman discusses GDP shrinking by 0.2% in the second quarter, the Gauteng office market at 18% vacancy, and why Hyde Park Corner is somehow the best-performing retail asset in the country. This podcast is sponsored by Capitec. To catch every episode, click the follow and subscribe buttons on News24’s Spotify, Apple, and YouTube podcast channels, or catch up on past episodes here. Editions drop on Thursdays at 17:00.

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