Well-known South African investor missed his opportunity to become a billionaire

Brenthurst co-founder Magnus Heystek passed on the opportunity to buy shares in PSG for 50 cents a piece in the 1990s, using the money to buy a BMW instead.  

Heystek’s calculations, 30 years later, show that he would have become a billionaire if he had bought the shares in PSG. 

Founded by Jannie Mouton and Chris Otto in 1995, the PSG Group was created as an investment holding company for financial service providers. 

The ultimate aim was to create a financial services conglomerate by investing in companies early on and helping to build them into established corporations. 

Some of PSG’s most famous investments include the creation of Capitec out of hundreds of microlenders, the private school giant Curro, and PSG Financial Services. 

Mouton never planned on starting his own investment holding company, as he had already started a successful stockbroking firm, Senekal, Mouton & Kitshoff. 

However, he was fired from his position as managing director at his own company in the early 1990s, forcing him to find another job. 

Mouton moved back to Stellenbosch and co-founded PSG with Otto, which they wanted to be a corporate incubator run from the student town. 

The late 1990s would see PSG make a series of investments that would be career-defining and create significant wealth for its shareholders and founders. 

PSG snapped up hundreds of microlenders and brought them together under the Capitec brand, which Michiel Le Roux and his team would turn into a R550 billion juggernaut. 

Capitec was the jewel of the PSG portfolio. The investment holding company held 26.4% of the bank’s shares when it unbundled its stake in 2020. 

The distribution of these shares to PSG shareholders was valued at R27.7 billion, with it retaining a stake of 4.3% in Capitec after the unbundling. 

This success has almost been eclipsed by PSG building out its own financial services giant in the form of PSG Financial Services. 

While PSG has unbundled its investments in Capitec, Curro, and STADIO and delisted from the JSE, the financial services business remains on the exchange. 

Valued at R38 billion, PSG Financial Services sits on R565 billion of assets and generated R1.68 billion of headline earnings in the 2026 financial year. 

The PSG Group has been one of South Africa’s most successful post-1994 corporate stories, having made billionaires of the Mouton family and generating significant value for investors. 

Magnus’ missed opportunity

Heystek missed out on this wealth-creation journey, preferring to spend his savings on a brand-new BMW. 

In an interview on BizNews, Heystek compared the opportunity he had to invest in PSG with the chance to invest in SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. 

Heystek’s Brenthurst Wealth secured an allocation of shares in the SpaceX IPO for its clients and is expected to participate in the upcoming listings of Anthropic and OpenAI. 

“To answer the question why I invested in SpaceX, I need to go back 30 years or so, when a young gentleman walked into my office,” Heystek explained. 

“This man told me that he was starting a little financial services company and offered an opportunity to invest in it at 50 cents a share.” 

“I considered the offer for a while, but I turned him down. I had some money in the bank at the time, and I bought a new BMW instead.” 

The gentleman who presented Heystek with the offer was Mouton, and the company was PSG before it had invested in Capitec or Curro. 

“I did the calculation the other day on what would have happened if I bought PSG shares 30 years ago at 50 cents a share and found out that I would have been a billionaire,” Heystek said. 

While Heystek admits that this missed opportunity burns him to this day, Heystek’s firm, Brenthurst Wealth, has also been immensely successful.

Founded in 2004, Brenthurst Wealth has grown into one of South Africa’s biggest wealth managers with R35 billion in assets under management. 

The firm benefited significantly from the rally in JSE-listed shares throughout the 2000s, when a commodity boom and a growing economy created a five-year-long bull market. 

Brenthurst invested its money well and created significant wealth for its clients. However, the collapse of asset prices in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis and the era of State Capture changed things. 

Heystek and Brenthurst shifted their strategy and invested clients’ money internationally, partnering with Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, and Vanguard. 

This helped the company and its clients benefit from the historic run in US technology shares, which has made Brenthurst one of the largest boutique investment managers in South Africa.