Royal Pain in AGM Theo Botha has taken issue once more with Pick n Pay’s family-owned structure, which, says the activist shareholder, is antiquated and in fact illegal in many parts of the civilised world. Mmmhmm, says Pick n Pay, whose founder Mr Ackerman believes that a family-owned structure is the best way to ensure the perpetuation of the founding values, so how do you explain then that 35% of Fortune 500 companies in the US are family-controlled and account for 50% of GDP? Ah, says Botha, but collapsing the pyramid, as it were, would (somehow) put R1billion in the pocket of other shareholders. Pick n Pay’s new chairman, Gareth Ackerman, whose R3million salary bill has caused some eyebrows to tend skyward, reiterated in his inaugural AGM address the family’s commitment to retaining control of the business.

Comment: And there is no arguing with the view that if you had invested R1 with Mr Ackerman in 1967, you could buy yourself a very nice television from one of his hypermarkets today.

Pick n Pay’s electronic shelf labelling (ESL) experiment has been a big success, with positive feedback from customers and management alike. The system, acquired from Swedish technology merchants Pricer, has been trialled in 32 stores and 12 liquor stores in KZN, and implemented in the first Pick n Pay Express stores in the Western Cape. It will be rolled out into the more technologically backward regions of the hinterland based on the success of the Western Cape deployment. The system allows retailers to accurately update as many as 50,000 prices every hour, while reducing labour costs.

Comment: Which is why thousands of little digital displays on shelf end up being more cost effective than their paper equivalent.

“We starve them of oxygen before they even get there,” says SABMiller’s local MD Norman Adami of competitors brandhouse, who bring such green-bottled lovelies to the market as Amstel and Heineken. The Big Feller’s share of the SA market slipped by 2.1% in the year to March, while brandhouse’s grew by a not-entirely-coincidental 2.2%. As part of their oxygen-choking initiatives SAB have spent R170million on advertising, promotions and sponsorship, notably of the national team, over the World Cup. SAB sell 80% of their beer in the townships, 50% of that to shebeens and taverns, and they have increased the number of reps serving that market.

Comment: While SAB’s virtual monopoly of the beer market in the past has not equipped it philosophically to tolerate competition, it certainly has the wherewithal to deal with it when it arises.

According to one Paul Theron, MD of Vestact, the Aspen share is an excellent buy these days for a number of reasons. The healthy net margins, for one; the merging of Aspen and GSK’s distribution businesses in sub-Saharan Africa, which make the combined businesses the region’s market leader; its excellent position in generics at a time when branded drugs with sales totalling more than $50billion are about to lose their patent protection in the US, and finally, the R9.8million bid, announced last week, for drugmaker Sigma in Aus, where they are as prone to the sniffles as the next arid hellhole, but where they tend to have more cash to purchase medication.

Comment: Pricy though the share may be, we’ll definitely still have a flutter.

Further evidence for the theory that almost anyone can be an economist or a sportswriter, two groups who are never held to account for their predictions however wildly out. Standard Bank Economist’s predictions for April retail trade sales: 1.5%. Actual retail trade sales: 3.2%. Margin of error: 46.6%. Excuses for what in any other profession would be regarded as a big mistake: 0. According to Nedbank Group Economists, gazing through the crystal lens of hindsight and with StatsSA’s useful tables at hand, higher than expected sales of textiles, clothing, footwear and leather goods, as well as sales by general dealers were the main drivers of this unexpected windfall.

Comment: They predict confidently, though probably incorrectly, that sales will continue this upward trend for the rest of the year.

The Consumer Protection Act (CPA) was designed to make South Africans the “best protected consumers in the world”. A presumably unintended consequence of the Act, according to one of the lawyers whose career has shifted direction in response to the legislation, is that the cost of compliance may hurt smaller businesses, or even discourage entry into the market. One of the Act’s more high-profile clauses is the one which states that consumers no longer have to prove negligence on the part of the manufacturer or retailer in the case of certain loses suffered as a result of defective goods. The insurance needed to cover any claims resulting from liability might be just a little too much for smaller players to bear.

Comment: Market dominance by the big boys is something from which no amount of legislation seems able to protect the consumer.

In the best evidence to date that Walmart is coming to South Africa, an analyst who has chosen to remain anonymous has told Business Report blogger Florence de Vries that it’s a done deal. “Mark my words, Walmart is coming,” said the analyst, who declined to be named.

Woolies’ recycling initiative at eight Engen service stations in the Western Cape has proved very popular with the moss-covered punters of that rainy peninsular. Shortly after the trial began, Nampak, Woolies’ partner in the worthy endeavour, doubled its collection from the more popular sites, and increased its frequency at most of them. Woolies intend installing collection sites at another 50 Engens over the next six months.

Over the period of the World Cup, Massmart have seen an increase of 9–12% in the sales of food products and 7% in cold beverages. They are expecting sales of football-branded folding chairs to exceed 20,000, with blankets and seat pads each coming in at over the 2,000 mark. Which is what we call a result.

Fifa have apparently dropped their case against the plucky if inexplicably named Dutch brewer Bavaria, who kitted out a passel of beauties in orange dresses with the logo displayed discreetly, and strategically, on their chests at the footie. Some settlement was apparently reached in what must be a pyrrhic victory for Fifa and its sponsors.

Miffed at the Yankee takeover of the company founded by her great, great, great grandfather, Cadbury heiress Felicity Loudoun has announced that she is going to sell her £27 million Oxford estate in order to get the family back into the chocolate game, although not, obviously, under the Cadbury name. In unrelated trivia, Cadbury is also the name of Richie Rich’s butler.

The English World Cup football team visited a Cape Town orphanage yesterday. "How sad it was to see those little faces without hope", said Jamal, age six.