Publications
Partners
- For more financial news, go to the News24 Business front page.
Naspers and Prosus chair Koos Bekker has sold Prosus shares worth R3.4 billion to fund the development of hotels.
The shares were sold via a family trust over the past week, and the proceeds will be used for building operations at hotels in various countries, according to a Prosus statement.
The shares were sold in three transactions for around €173.4 million (R3.4 billion).
This is the first time in a decade that the trust sold Naspers or Prosus shares. But Bekker himself sold R20 billion in Naspers stock options in 2015.
With his wife Karen Roos, a former editor of Elle Decoration, Bekker developed the Babylonstoren estate in the Cape Winelands. In 2019, they opened The Newt in Somerset, UK. Both estates feature large gardens, restaurants and hotels.
READ | SA billionaire Koos Bekker spent millions on an estate in the UK - take a look
Bekker founded the M-Net (later MultiChoice) pay-television business in 1985 and became CEO of Naspers in 1997. He was appointed as chair in 2015. In 2001, under his leadership, Naspers bought a third of Chinese internet firm Tencent for $34 million. Tencent's total market value has since skyrocketed to more than $470 billion.
Click here for Prosus share price and other data
Prosus' share price rose more than 72% over the past year, while Naspers' almost doubled.
