Markus Jooste information

Markus Johannes Jooste (22 January 1961 – 21 March 2024) was a South African businessman and the CEO of Steinhoff International. He was an avid horse breeder, and in 2016 was reported to be one of Africa's richest people, worth $400 million.^[1][2] Joining forces with Christo Wiese in 2014, they embarked on an aggressive international expansion programme.^[3] The share price of their conglomerate reached a peak in March 2016,^[4] favouring their strategy of paying for dividends and acquisitions by sales of stock.^[5]

Following a dispute with business partner Andreas Seifert, European regulators, journalists and law enforcement were alerted to the conglomerate's inflated profit and asset values, besides off-balance-sheet deals with third parties,^[6] causing Deloitte LLP to demand an internal investigation before the 2017 financials would be signed off. Jooste resisted this demand and could not convince the Steinhoff board to appoint new auditors. Jooste submitted his resignation on 5 December 2017,^[5] followed by Wiese 9 days later when a large investor, PIC, called for independent oversight.^[7]

Jooste's sudden resignation was followed by an involved and protracted controversy concerning Steinhoff's accounting practices in its Central European business dating back to 2014.^[8][9] The resulting uncertainty saw some €10 billion (R160 billion) of Steinhoff's value wiped off the markets in a matter of days,^[8] with continuing losses as the situation unfolded. Insurmountable debts and claims would lead to Steinhoff's demise in 2023.

The ensuing 3,000 or 7,000 page PwC investigation^[10] directly linked Jooste and his CFO Ben la Grange to widespread fictitious transactions and accounting irregularities^[11] resulting in the Stellenbosch-headquartered company claiming R870 million from Jooste and R272 million from Ben la Grange in a summons lodged at the high court in Cape Town, which aimed to recoup salaries as well as bonuses.^[10] Aided by the Panama Papers, some journalists contend that insider trading had occurred since Steinhoff's listing in 1998, and that the company's top brass had acted on both sides of several deals. Leveraged Steinhoff shares served as currency to remunerate third parties, while shareholder value was diluted to acquisitions in which Jooste and a circle of associates had allegedly acquired prior stakes.^[12]

As South Africa's Hawks investigative unit admitted to making no progress at all, while the NPA lacked the in-house skills to address crimes of this nature,^[13] criminal charges were not forthcoming. The ruinous impact on pension funds caused some South African lawmakers to express dismay at the lack of prosecution, and some demanded arrests of the culpable parties without delay.^[14] The JSE has meanwhile found Jooste guilty of two contraventions of listing requirements, and imposed a maximum fine of R15 million on him personally, while barring him from acting as a director of a listed company for a period of 20 years.^[15]