96.8% of David Jones shareholders (including, presumably, the previously recalcitrant Solomon Lew) have approved the bid of Woolworths to take over the iconic Australian retailer, where by “iconic” the Australian press mean “floundering”. On June 24, Woolworths offered Cap’n Lew a swashbuckling A$17 each for his Country Road shares, which, it is believed, he had thrown in as a bargaining chip as he threatened to scupper the Davy Jones deal. An interesting aspect of the transaction has been that Woolworths’ share price has risen 10% since we began reporting on the bid in April, rather than declining as is wont to happen to the purchasing party’s stock when these big deals go down.

Comment: This might be because the acquisition positions The Dapper One within spitting distance of businesses like Zara, H&M and Top Shop as a flashy dealer in inexpensive fashions.

Last week’s furore concerned the comparison of pig farms to concentration camps in that august publication, the M&G. An ad taken out by anonymous parties decried the use of sow crates – metal boxes in which pregnant sows may be confined (which in the case of factory pigs might be for the entirety of their adult lives) – then called upon Raymond Ackerman to do something about it. Thus unfairly singling out a particular business and offending the Jewish community in one fell swoop – while, it might be said, making a valid moral point. Pick n Pay objected; the M&G retracted and offered the proceeds to charity; pigs had no further say in the matter. While some suppliers have started to phase out the inhumane practice (for inhumane read: something which renders the practitioner less than human) full phase out would take until 2020. After which point, presumably, pig farmers would resume being fully human.

Comment: Is there anyone out there prepared to consider the perhaps insane possibility that all life is equally sacred?

Having allegedly paid R12million to FSB CFO Dawood Seedat to make a potential tax headache go away, a transaction which ultimately ended the career of that office bearer, Africa Cash & Carry have now been hit by SARS with a R1.2billion tax bill and served with a preservation order aimed at ensuring there are enough assets kicking around to service that bill. Africa CEO Edrees Ahmed Hathurani is not taking all this lying down however, far from it: he alleges intimidation by Seedat and is fighting the provisional preservation order in court, on the grounds of factual flaws. SARS for its part believes the order is necessary in order to prevent Africa from divesting its assets to another business.

Comment: And so there is little left to do except wait and see.

Among the South African businesses building the foundation of vast international holdings this week was Bidvest, which has recently acquired 60% stakes in both Gruppo Dac S.p.A. (DAC), a family-owned food and beverage distributor in Italy and PCL 24/7, a specialist chilled products distributer in the United Kingdom, nabbing the pair of a cool £95million sterling. Bidvest Foodservices, which contributes 34% to group revenues, offers a range of well, food services, and products to a range of clients from the retail sector through to industrial catering. These include private label products, finished products, fresh produce, food ingredients, meat, seafood, and equipment and logistics solutions. The focus for Foodservices, according to CEO Bernard Berson, is not one grand overarching strategy, but “a mosaic of small but significant local successes.”

Comment: Oh, I say.

Last week’s other furore concerned the report by the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB) that many businesses were hiding a litany of sins and indiscretions behind the “may contain GMOs” label. The label, you see, applies only where it is impractical for manufacturers to conduct the necessary tests on their products – for example, where the organisms in question have now been processed into non-organismhood. Most bakeries and retailers have been found to not be properly labelling their ingredients. Checkers white bread, for example, contains 91.09 percent of genetically modified content in its soya flour, with no warning label. Manufacturers and retailers have come back swinging, with Woolies, Pick n Pay and Tiger Brands all averring that GM soya flour made up less than 5 percent of their white bread.

Comment: It might be possible to feed seven billion people without some tinkering with nature. But we’d like to see you try it. And one way forward might be for everyone to eat less bread in the first place.

After a breakfast of small kittens last Wednesday morning, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that it would probably be revising its growth expectations for the dear old South African economy downward in its July World Economic Outlook Update. Not just for the sheer delicious pleasure of it, you understand, but because it genuinely believes that what with our ongoing industrial action and intermittent power supply, inter alia, things are not what they could be Emzansi. But don’t believe us: these are the words of local senior IMF Rep Axel Schimmelpfennig, a man whose name is so delightfully appropriate that we find ourselves compelled to record it twice: Axel Schimmelpfennig.

Comment: And once again, because this is the IMF we are talking about and these things need to be treated with appropriate gravity: Axel Schimmelpfennig.