The petrol price is now impacting upon inflation and bringing it down. The latest figure indicated a drop from 5,8% in December to 5,3% and we can expect more drops in the months ahead.  Basics, such as milk, bread and eggs are costing less and the other good news with inflation coming down is that we are unlikely to face an interest rate hike at the moment.  

It might well be that we could see inflation as low as 4% within a few months and if we get really lucky, and that leads to our bonds been more attractive, we might even get some more inflows of foreign currency, which in turn might just lower the Rand a bit more, which in turn will affect the petrol price positively, which in turn …  you get the picture!  Let’s hope we do get this convergence of good news and the various factors start working together to improve and strengthen our economy.

Age management clinics are all the rage in certain places overseas. To a large extent this would involve doctors testing the levels in one’s body of various vitamins, glucose, red cell blood counts and testing one’s stress levels.  In terms of the management, one ends up taking specific vitamins and hormones so as to replace what your body may be short of.  I went through a comprehensive blood test about 7 or 8 months ago and the results showed that my adrenal glands were shot, that I was highly stressed and that my insulin level was far too high, despite the fact that I am in relatively good shape and don’t have as much sugar as most people would.  I was given the various vitamins and hormones to take and I must say I was quite impressed with the results when I had my blood tested again in early January.  

For example, my insulin level has come down almost 77%, my red cell folate had more than doubled and the cortisol levels had improved nicely.  I appreciate that this is not the kind of treatment that everybody can have or afford, because blood tests are quite expensive, but it does indicate where the science is moving, and that by identifying problems in your blood at an early stage, you can treat those things that tend to lead towards diabetes and possible other serious issues.  I am sure the science will become more and more advanced as time goes by, but when you can compare different blood tests to each other, you appreciate that this is real and scientific – it is not a lot of mumbo jumbo about how people feel or what they think.  As the doctor said blood tests don’t lie.  I am not sure how many doctors practice this type of medicine in South Africa, but I went to a doctor in Pretoria who specialises in this, Dr Hein Badenhorst, and the results were both very illuminating and to see improvement after a few months was also very rewarding.  Obviously though, as more and more people do it, the costs will come down and certainly once one gets past 40 it is probably a good idea to check your blood, from time to time to see what it can reveal and what potential future problems can be headed off early.

I hope that, despite the current deficit the government is running, they don’t decide to increase personal taxes in this year’s budget.  I think that our personal tax rate, as well as business tax rates in South Africa, are generally higher than a lot of countries, and we have to be careful not to push those up too much.  

One has to plug the gap somewhere and the strikes have certainly cost the government revenue in terms of taxes in the mining sector and the continuous Eskom power failures will have the same effect on the profits of many companies, and as a result the taxes they pay.  The money must be found somewhere and I think the areas where we could perhaps tax a little bit more heavily is on estate duty – one’s estate pays a relative low estate duty in South Africa, compared to the UK and USA, when one dies, and there is certainly room for that to be increased.  The tax that is reputed to be the hardest to avoid and is the most efficient for collecting is VAT and as a result I think it would make sense to increase VAT.  Normally governments are scared to do that because the trade unions get hysterical and they feel that VAT targets the poor.  

VAT targets everybody, but the wealthy will still end up paying more VAT, because they spend far more.  Another tax, which is often forgotten about, and the time for government this year is absolutely perfect, is to build it into the petrol price.  The timing is perfect because we got used to pay R14,00 a litre for petrol and now we have slid down dramatically from that point and so there may well be room for government to add another 50c of tax onto the petrol price, especially if they see further decreases in the months ahead.  So, I would keep income tax just as it is and I would target estate duty, VAT (the UK is at 20%) and the petrol price.  It has to come from somewhere – what are your suggestions – apart from government stopping wasteful expenditure?   

From time to time my firm is criticised by potential clients because we don’t want to take on their case because it is not economically viable for them and us.  We don’t like to take on a case, which will require our client travelling back and forth to medico legal appointments, getting all sorts of reports done, only to discover at the end of the matter that the case ends up being settled for an undertaking only, the client gets no money at all and is then very unhappy.  When we turn clients away on this basis, or refer them directly to another attorney or the Road Accident Fund for a second opinion should they so choose, we find that some people can get quite upset.  They feel that our advertising means we will take on any case, however minor or inconsequential – which is in fact not the case.

I have recently received complaints from clients of other attorneys based in Johannesburg who have written to us indicating that they are very unhappy with those attorneys because they received no compensation at all at the end of the case.  This can happen.  

What has compounded the situation is that in these particular cases the attorneys concerned actually approached the people from the beginning of the claim, something that is not allowed, saying that they got information from an X-ray department that the person had been injured and that they had a good case.  It is altogether one thing if you approach an attorney and insist they take on your case, which the attorney cautions you does not appear to be a good case, compared to the situation when the attorney initiates contact with you, tells you that you have a case and then later sings a new tune.  

These particular clients are extremely upset, saying that a lot of their time was wasted going to medico legal appointments only to be told that their injury, which was for a fractured clavicle, and which had no bearing on the job that the person does at all, is not a serious injury.  The fact of the matter is that a competent attorney should have been able to asses that from day one, and rather than give the client hope have advised them that they case would only be settled for an undertaking.  I believe our approach of advising the clients that they do not have an economically viable case and it is not worth doing, unless they are not on a Medical Aid, and will make use of the undertaking, is the better approach.  What these other attorneys have not informed the client of is that although the client is not receiving a single cent out of the case, the attorneys are going to recover costs, which will not be as much as they would normally make in a case, but for having wasted the client’s time, they are going to earn a fee.  My opinion is that a claim like this really should not have been lodged in the first place.  The client is unhappy and getting no compensation, the RAF is paying out and only the lawyers are getting paid. 

I have read a lot in financial magazines about the GoPro company, and the success it was having with its many action cameras.  Most of you would have seen the footage of the view point of a person jumping out of an aeroplane or swimming under water that is generally shot with these cameras.  For a very small camera it is incredible that they can shoot a video at 4k, which is four times more detailed than the current HD or Blu Rays that one would typically come across.  The company has attracted a cult following for its cameras, and when I got one in December, many of the shops were sold out of the model as well as the memory chips required.  

It has a lot of fun features that people probably enjoy more than just taking photos and that would include not only its slow motion features, where you can up the number of frames taken per second to 120, but also the time lapse feature.  To create a time lapse feature you may, for example, take a photograph every two seconds along a journey and then put those photos together so that a 20 minute drive can for example be shown as a 30 second video by combining all of the photos.  It is lots of fun, and I am not sure what the practical uses are, but you are certainly going to see more people wandering around with cameras strapped either to their chest, to their forehead and of course cyclists already have it mounted either to their bicycle or to the helmet.  You have similar mounts that you can use in your car and if you put the camera in its case, you can film a video under water.  Some amazing point of view footage has been captured by people around the world and it is certainly a very nice to have toy, but whether or not the company is worth investing in and how long this particular fad will last, is another question altogether.  

The camera also needs perfecting because it has problems with overheating, problems with too short a battery life, but it is certainly a fun device to take away on holiday with you and allow your children to help film some of the footage, especially under water.

Everyone’s a critic is a book that I read recently by Bill Tancer.  I read it, because to some extent all businesses face criticism at some stage or other and I wanted to know how to deal with it.  From that point of view, the book is extremely useful, indicating that no matter how good your business is, you will get some bad reviews, and that bad reviews don’t actually affect businesses as much as one may think.  That is not to say if a business only gets bad reviews that it won’t be affected, but it just means that depending on what the bad reviews are, and the response thereto, most members of the public are not really affected by negative reviews. This stance is backed up by empirical data that they supply as well as interviews with many business owners.  

The book says that the key to dealing with a negative review is to start with a thank you, and to then make your reply unique, sincere and directly address the complainant.  In that, in comparison to many of the complaints you see on Hello Peter where companies have what appears to be a whole lot of automatic replies that they cut and paste.  The author says you should also explain what went wrong with the matter and reiterate your vision for your own business, how it should run and how, if the client’s experience differed from it, and lastly offer to connect directly with the person who is complaining.  He says the one thing you should never do is offer compensation because it will lead to other people trying to extract similar benefits based on fraudulent allegations in the future. What I also found interesting is that most business owners have a sensitivity, like I do, to these complaints and typically get very worked up about them. The book takes the view that bad reviews happen and they say that reading negative reviews can have a positive effect on a business, especially when those reviews will have some validity to them.  Criticism on the other hand, especially if it has no basis or is vindictive, is very difficult to digest.  Tancer points out that a bad review is not necessarily about the product – there are award-winning restaurants that have bad reviews based on people not being able to get a booking with them - and on a similar note, most of the complaints I have dealt with in the past are from people with cases that are not economically viable, who are very upset that we will not take on their case.  That is altogether a different complaint than somebody saying they felt that a case was messed up and they never received as much compensation that they anticipated.  The fact of the matter is that there are many smaller claims which we do not take on and for good reason and one cannot get too worked up about listening to complaints from people who you cannot take on as a client.

I was stunned to hear on the radio the other day that Eskom is very proud that other countries are contacting it to find out how to deal with a shortage of electricity supply and to learn more about load shedding.  It is somewhat embarrassing that we are now the experts on load shedding and I would suggest that those countries, before trying to learn how to fix the problem, once it has arrived, learn how to plan for the future and make sure that they don’t have a problem.  Of course, it is also Eskom’s way of trying to put a positive spin on everything – rather than discuss how bad the planning has been, how disastrous the foreseeable future is, let’s talk about how other countries feel that we are doing very well with the completely inadequate supply of power.  

What is more frightening is the continued references that they make about load shedding being needed to prevent a national blackout and that load shedding being far better than a national blackout.  I get the impression that if we do have a national blackout and we reach this catastrophic state, it is not as easy as flicking a switch back on.  There seems to be outright fear from the CEO to the spokesperson whenever they talk about the possibility of a national blackout, and the very fact that they bring it up so often means that it cannot be a totally remote possibility.  It is almost as if, when it does happen one day, they can say that this is what they have always warned about and then possibly blame some Municipalities for not implementing load shedding for long enough.  I cannot see any other reason why they continually advise us that there is something worse than load shedding. 

I am a bit puzzled by the recent adverts by Ekurhuleni Municipality.  The advert is to be heard on most radio stations, quite often, and they emphasise how they received a clean audit on their accounts.  The ad says because they got a clean audit, they must be taken seriously and it shows that they are interested in corporate governance.  I must say that I would think that a clean audit is to be taken for granted.  I cannot believe that times are so tough that when a major Municipality gets a clean audit that they need to spend money on celebrating it – and I cannot really see what they achieved with spending the taxpayers’ money on these advertisements.  

Are we now to expect every Municipality that has had a clean audit to also now issue a radio advert that they too have had a clean audit?  I know that the jokers will say that there are not too many of those, and that is probably true, but I think it is a sad state of affairs when you have to say that your clean audit is a sign of your commitment to corporate governance.  A clean audit is a basic thing that anybody who is paying tax to that Municipality, via rates, would expect and it really should not need to be advertised.  To me it would be the same as Eskom running an advert that in the deals for the new power stations no bribes are included and that they have been thoroughly vetted to ensure that the contracts they have awarded are bribe-free.  It is what we expect, isn’t it? 

I was interested to read recently that the news channel, CNN, has reached an agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration in America that will allow it to use drones for news gathering.  One cannot just fly a drone around in a public area without getting permission and it is significant that this group has now obtained permission to have unmanned aircraft with cameras attached.  No doubt they will have to be very tightly controlled because although they could produce very interesting and informative news, for example of traffic congestion in the area or of people attending events, they may not be ideally suited to more dangerous situations.  

One only has to think about the recent incident with terrorists in France and how it would certainly complicate things for the police if for example you had media drones flying around the warehouse in which the terrorists were finally tracking, while the operation was still under way.  That type of coverage would obviously lead to the terrorists or criminals being given excellent footage while they sit inside the building, of who is outside it, where the forces are situated, and more than likely be able to ascertain from which angle they are likely to attack.  It is one thing for the FAA to give permission, but it is another thing to regulate the use and that is undoubtedly going to be something that would need to be tightly controlled because as much as we would like to see the action, step by step as it unfolds, it may just make things a lot harder, not only for the police, but for potential hostages caught up in such situations. 

I have read more reports about indoor tanning recently and it is one of those things where the tide has yet to turn and unfortunately it remains too popular.  It seems, notwithstanding a lot of coverage about the dangers of indoor tanning, that this is still incredibly popular, especially with younger women.  It seems sadly, as with smoking, that although the word is out as to how dangerous it is, a lot of people simply ignore it in the name of vanity and looking good, and subject themselves to dangerous rays.  

In some States in America you now need parental consent before you can use the machines, if you are under 18, and some have adopted an outright ban on minors using them.  Apparently, the incident rate of melanomas in women under the age of 40 has risen by more than a third since the 1990’s, but tanning salons are still extremely popular.  It is funny how perceptions change, and it seems strange to read that many years ago being tanned was not considered socially desirable – and was similar to having calluses on your hands – sending out a message that you were a low status worker who worked outdoors in the sun.  

Now, a suntan is considered glamorous and despite the fact that lots of sun will make you look 40 at the age of 30, a lot of people cannot stop.  The World Health Organisation found, as far back as 2009, that using sun beds before the age of 30, was associated with a 75% increase in the risk of a melanoma and another study, in 2012, found that every four sessions that you have on a tanning bed before the age of 35, increase your risk of certain skin cancers by 15% - each time!  

An interesting study by the CDC, which is the Centre for Disease Control, also found that young women who use sun beds, because it is largely younger women who use them, generally also indulge in illegal drug use and are far more promiscuous than women who don’t use the sun beds.  That would indicate, to a certain extent, that they are aware of the risks of these beds, but have taken a gambling approach of live for today and to hell with the consequences.  There will always be those who say that people should be free to do as they want, but the other side thereof is that, even if they are not harming others, they will cost others extra taxes in the form of the hospital treatments and therapy they need at a later stage to try and save their lives.

A new economics paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, has some interesting findings about marriage.  They basically say that you need to marry the person who is your best friend.  

They have also concluded that people who are married are happier than those who are single, particularly during the mid-life timeframe.  The scientists say in particular this is because people who are married can handle mid-life stress better together because they can share the load and they can share their friendship, whereas obviously single people do not have that benefit.  The other findings include findings that stable marriages are more common among educated, high income people and that people who are less educated and earn lower incomes are more likely to be divorced.  The important part of the survey is that they found that people who are married to somebody that they consider to be their best friend are more likely to be satisfied in their marriage than others. The social scientists say what this means is that one must not forget, in living your daily life, that the most important thing with your marriage partner is your friendship with that person.

There has been a lot of good news to start the year with.  The most important of which is undoubtedly the petrol price, where after substantial decreases in recent months, we now have the biggest decrease ever.  It is pity that the Rand has not been strong and is typically weak during this period because we really could have seen the petrol price coming down even more.  

Petrol feeds directly through to inflation and hopefully this can help keep inflation down.  In many respects, and particularly for those who don’t travel much, we don’t appreciate how cheap food for example, is in South Africa.  Yes, we do get ripped off on cell phone calls and internet, etc compared to the rest of the world, but amongst the places where we score is the cost of owning or building a home in South Africa which is far cheaper than overseas and certainly the cost of food with particular reference to the basics like vegetables and fruit are far cheaper here.  I am not going to go into the fact that we have a better climate than most places, because that is true as well – because the focus of this blog is the financial situation.  I certainly hope that we continue to see petrol decreases, but I cannot see the price of oil staying so low for too long.  We need to see some Rand strength to back it all up and hopefully, although unlikely, we can pray for no tax increases in the budget speech in the third week of February. 

I think that critics play an important role and I certainly find the reviews on RottenTomatoes to be very helpful.  One does not want to pay, what is a fortune, to go to the movies these days, only to endure some absolute rubbish and sit there for 2 hours hoping that it gets better.  So, reviews will certainly help you weed out the kind of nonsense movies that you don’t like, but which somebody else may well enjoy – such as all the Transformer movies.  On the other hand, I have noticed a bias in critics over the years where science fiction movies generally get lower ratings unless they have a limit to them, like Star Wars, which is the kind of science fiction that I don’t actually enjoy much.  

It seems that the critics always have a natural love for any movie set in the 1800’s, which will often get 20% or 30% more than I think it should and if the science fiction movie gets 70% or more, you must know that it is exceptional.  In my own experience, a science fiction movie getting a 40% or 50% rating is well worth watching because generally that is a 7 out of 10 movie for me.  I was surprised in that regard to see Interstellar get only 73% on RottenTomatoes so far, bearing in mind that the ratings move as more people rate the movies, because the movie is far superior to that.  I was unfortunate to only see it on a normal screen at the movies, and this is the kind of movie that will not really show as well at home or on DVD, because it was shot in IMAX and is intended to be seen on an IMAX screen.  Unfortunately, there are only three IMAX screens in the whole of South Africa and only one of them is in Gauteng, being in Pretoria.  That is a pity, because one does not get to see a movie as the director intended it to be seen and you can only imagine that after being intended for a wide format like IMAX, that somebody watching it on TV or on BoxOffice in two or three months, is not really seeing the same product.  The script is not going to change, but much of the overall beauty of the movie and its scenes of space are going to be lost by the time one watches it on a small screen.

I recently made the mistake of downloading a program that brought with it a whole lot of malware.  Once I started trying to surf the Internet with these applications, things became intolerable – anything I researched would result in a new popup from companies trying to sell me products with similar products related to my search, and one screen after another would start popping up.  One forgets how damaging this can be to your computer, and if you don’t have a few basic skills, it can be almost impossible to get it off one’s computer.  The programs load a whole lot of other programs onto your computer and adding and removing them under the control panel becomes very difficult.  Some of the programs these days are so vicious that even when you try to uninstall them, they refuse to uninstall unless you load another program at the same time.  You have to agree to load that other program and then not accept their conditions.  To cut a long story short, while I am not an expert on computers, I certainly have a reasonable degree of skill, and it took me well over an two hours to rid my computer of all the programs.  I really think it is absolute abuse and that companies who create and provide such software should face lawsuits and legal action.  It can never be acceptable that obstacles are put in your path when you try to uninstall such programs from your own devices.

I have spent a lot of time walking in the last month, and the results on my waistline and my weight have been fairly good.  It is just a reminder that apart from healthy eating, exercise is essential, and you don’t have to run, you don’t have to gym for hours – although those will always be useful – and that the simplest exercise, and one that does not cost you anything, works just as well.  

To me the key is to get one’s metabolism burning at least twice a day and that means a walk in the early morning before work and in the evening.  I know a lot of people will have excuses about what time they will have to get up and go to work, etc and that is why I have timed my blog for this time of the year – because with the holidays ahead there is nobody who cannot do a lot of walking – even if you get to your 10,000 steps by marching around a shopping centre looking at what is on offer for Christmas!  The best time to start a fitness regime is not on the 1st January, although rather then than never, but if you can start the new you before the New Year, when you have time during the holidays, it will certainly help.  Walk or exercise twice a day for more than 30 minutes each time and ideally try and target at least about 90 minutes a day of walking, do that 21 days in a row and you will see small, but noticeable improvements.

In South Africa one is used to be hounded at every robot and stop street by a variety of hawkers.  I admire anybody who is out working, especially in a dangerous position like that, rather than to resort to illegal ways of trying to get money.  The tactic these days though appears to be to offer you something for free, in particular a hat.  

It is a business model that obviously works on the law of reciprocation where anybody, with a conscience anyway, feels bad about getting something for free from someone who has so little.  They explain to you how they like you so much that they have to give you something for free, like the hat, and apparently if you do think of taking it then they start asking you for money.  It worked a charm in my case, because I felt terribly bad for the person and I gave him R10, but said that I did not think it was enough for the hat, and gave the hat back as well.  In other words, I ended up donating R10, getting nothing for it and all because I made the mistake of winding down my window.  They often get you to wind down your window by pointing to the front of your car and you think they are going to tell you that there is a flat tyre or some sort of problem, but I am going to learn to keep my window up in future, because it costs me money when I lower it!  It is of course far less irritating than the “window cleaners” who exist on certain intersections and who can be extremely aggressive at times by throwing water on your windscreen.

There are many suggestions as to how South Africa’s economy can be fixed, but I particularly enjoyed the latest Allan Gray Quarterly commentary.  Allan Gray is one of the leading investment houses in South Africa and they say to a large extent our problems are as a result of the commodity market around the world – and oil would be a commodity as well – having dipped significantly in recent years and of course we make our money selling commodities such as gold, diamonds and platinum.  They do say that there is also a poisonous relationship between government and business and until that is improved we are not going to see much growth.  They say the simplest way to fix our economy is to learn from history and promote an environment which allows the private sector to thrive and basically the government must have the courage to create a business friendly environment.  As they say, “Currently the private sector faces serious challenges.  A plethora of new regulations and government programmes, almost all of which increased the cost of doing business, make it difficult to justify new investment … The cost of excessive wage demands is reduced employment.”

I recently acquired the iPhone 6 Plus.  I think it is a wonderful phone, bridging the gap between the iPhone and the iPad and what it clearly illustrates is that bigger is better when it comes to phones.  One cannot underestimate the value of a bigger screen and a bigger keyboard, not only when your eyesight is fading, but particularly when you spend most of your day, when you are not at the office, checking up on e-mails, etc.  I don’t think that phones could go much bigger than it, because it does not fit that easily into your hand to make calls, if you are making continuous calls on your phone.  The size for some reason does make you feel you could drop it more easily and that is a worry.  On the other hand, I don’t find that my phone is continuously in my hand.  If I am driving, it is attached to a car kit, and generally it is face down on my desk with the phone switched to silent so it does not disturb me when I am working on something that requires my full attention.  

The extra size of the iPhone Plus then does not affect me as it might for example a young guy in a nightclub who may not find it so practical to have to pull it in and out of his pocket the entire night, as most people these days do.  In fact, most people these days spend their entire night at a venue looking at their phone and seldom looking up or participating in anything else!  I think it is a wonderful product and will probably sway me away from my iPhone 6, and lead to me keeping the larger version.  The iPhone 6 Plus has one other huge advantage over the iPhone 6 and that is in its battery size – which is much bigger and lets its battery last far longer than the iPhone 6, especially if you use a lot of applications and spend a lot of your time on the e-mails, which I do. For that reason I have to make the iPhone 6 Plus my device of the year.

I have been interested to see some of the comments in the media recently attributed to the CEO of the Road Accident Fund.  He has given assurances, as if that were in question, that the Road Accident Fund will honour its commitments to pay claimants.  The article, which appeared in various media, was obviously based on a press release, because just about every newspaper printed the article in the same way and basically said that people will have to accept that payments are not going to be as quick as they were in the last two years and payments are going to be much slower.  

That echoes the experience we’ve had since August this year, where essentially payments get slower each month.  The Road Accident Fund initially tried to indicate the one should advise them of matters that are only overdue by 60 days, now they seem to be interested in matters that are overdue by 90 days.  The CEO himself at one stage advised the media that the payments that have to be made exceeded their finances by R4,1 billion, and last month in a letter to me he indicated that that figure was now R4,5 billion.  The Road Accident Fund gets in about R1,8 or R1,9 million a month, depending on fuel sales, so unless government gives a lump sum allocation in the budget speech in February 2015, we are certainly looking at payments falling further and further behind.  The payments will of course be made, but just on the figures alone it would seem that an average time frame for payments would need to be 3 months, and of course many payments will take longer than the average.  People whose cases have been settled and are waiting for their money from their attorneys will need to be more patient now than ever before, but they will receive the money eventually.

I was interested to read that Markus Jooste has climbed up the Sunday Times list, now being worth R2,7 billion.  That is no doubt as a result of the Steinhoff share showing some significant growth in the last year, and I think it is only really the beginning.  They have just been involved in one of the biggest mergers in South African commercial history, and there is no doubt more to come.  I cannot talk about anybody else on the rich list, because I don’t know them, but I spent 6 years as a director of the Racing Association and as a result have spent numerous hours in the boardroom watching and listening to Markus.  I have met many very clever people, particularly amongst some of my University Professors, as well as some of the most brilliant legal minds in South Africa, ranging from the very best senior counsel to up and coming counsel, but none of them intimidated me, when it came to intellectual prowess as Markus did.  

I can say without doubt, and it is the only reason that I bought shares in the company, that he is the cleverest man I have ever come across.  An accountant by trade, when he spoke about law, I also kept quiet, because he knew far more than I did – although in fairness to me, corporate law is not my game.  For many years I thought that the investment community was not appreciating his brilliance, and so one of the mistakes I made was the initial Steinhoff shares that I bought for R13,00, and then R17,00, I sold at about R27,00.  No sooner did I sell, in the next 9 months or so the share price literally doubled again to about R50,00 at which time I decided to buy the shares again.  That obviously cost me.  It does show you that when you believe in something you should stick to your guns and wait for the market to recognise the product.  For me it has never been about the actual Steinhoff product, but just Markus’ brilliance and he is one of those people, if you ever heard that he was leaving a company, which I doubt would be the case, he would sell out straightaway and buy shares in the new company.