The man who became a billionaire by refusing a salary

Koos Bekker is behind the success of Naspers, one of the most valuable companies on the JSE, and became a billionaire by forgoing his salary for years.

Bekker is a titan of South African business, renowned for his transformative leadership of Naspers. 

Under his guidance, the former media conglomerate underwent a remarkable transformation from a traditional print media company into a global tech investment behemoth.

Today, Naspers is one of the most valuable companies on the JSE and is listed on the stock exchange with a market cap of R620 billion.

Bekker is also responsible for some of the country’s most well-known brands, including MultiChoice and M-Net.

According to Forbes, his net worth is $2.8 billion (R51.27 billion), making him one of the top 2,000 richest people globally and the ninth richest person in Africa.

This remarkable financial journey stands in stark contrast to his humble beginnings.

Before he became one of the country’s most successful businessmen, Jacobus Petrus “Koos” Bekker grew up on a mealie farm in Potchefstroom, where he was born in 1952.

Bekker attended Hoër Volkskool Heidelberg and, according to his biography Koos Bekker’s Billions, he was the school’s best speaker and chair of the debating society. 

In the book, Bekker is described as a ‘jack of all trades’ – he played in the first cricket team, won the regional trophy as part of the first tennis team and led the second rugby team to victory in its league.

His marks were excellent. Bekker was the school’s top performer and passed Afrikaans, English, Maths, and Physical Sciences with distinction. He was also the school’s head boy in his matric year.

Bekker’s dedication to his school is still strong all these years later, with Naspers’ 2020 Remuneration Report showing that he elected to donate the rand equivalent of his director’s fees – R2.1 million – to education. 

“This year, the recipient was the high school Volkskool in Heidelberg, Mpumalanga, South Africa,” the report states.

After matriculating, Bekker studied law and literature at Stellenbosch University. While at university, he dabbled in student journalism, which likely influenced his business interests later in life.

After Stellenbosch, Bekker completed his LLB at Wits University, where he was introduced to the business of television when he filled in as a translator for the dubbing of dramas and documentaries.

After graduating, he became a state prosecutor but soon realised it was not the right fit for him and moved to advertising.

In the early 1980s, Bekker and his wife sold their house, and he borrowed money to enrol in an MBA program at Columbia University.

Having researched the concept as part of his MBA degree, he returned to South Africa and, with Ton Vosloo, persuaded the major newspaper groups to invest in M-Net.

He sold the idea to the government of the day as a way for the print media to offset the revenue loss from television’s encroachment.

The fledgling pay-TV station started broadcasting in 1986, initially losing a lot of money before succeeding spectacularly, leading to a listing in 1990.

“In retrospect, it could hardly fail, as part of a duopoly and with its only competitor a parastatal that could not match M-Net’s marketing drive,” according to the book Movers & shakers: an A-Z of South African business people.

Flushed with success and realising that M-Net had probably reached its growth ceiling, Bekker split the company into M-Net and MultiChoice, which later became MIH.

MIH, with Johann Rupert’s Richemont, entered pay-TV in Europe, buying Netherlands-based Filmnet, which later became Nethold. 

Nethold increasingly took up the time and effort of senior executives, including Bekker, who moved to the Netherlands with journalist wife Karen Roos.

The European adventure also became increasingly costly. Eventually, it was bought out by competitor Canal Plus, and Bekker came home to the top spot at Naspers.

Many saw this as an odd career choice, as Bekker chose to move from a high-tech to a low-tech business at a time when many others were doing the opposite.

However, at Naspers, he was responsible for growing the group beyond its Afrikaans roots, and his experience in electronic media proved to be an advantage in the Internet era and the growing convergence of media.

Naspers was founded in 1915 as an Afrikaans newspaper publisher. It was the country’s dominant media company for many decades.

However, under Bekker’s leadership, it transformed into an Internet investing giant. Notably, he was instrumental in Naspers’ investment in Chinese social media and gaming giant Tencent.

Naspers holds a significant stake in Tencent, which is worth billions of dollars. Bekker led Naspers to pay $34 million for a third of the Chinese Internet firm in 2001 – perhaps the greatest venture investment ever.

His willingness to embrace innovation and a global, long-term outlook for his company set Bekker apart from other CEOs at the time.

These traits allowed Bekker to benefit from the internet revolution in the 1990s and 2000s and invest in Tencent. 

His management style was also unique, as Bekker was known for his hands-off approach. This style helped him attract and retain talented executives who could take charge of the business’s day-to-day operations while he had the freedom to focus on strategic planning.

One of Bekker’s most interesting – and riskiest – approaches to business was his compensation structure.

In 1999, Bekker made the unusual decision to forgo his salary, bonuses, and other perks and instead elected to be compensated through stock options.

This tied his personal wealth directly to Naspers’s success and its investments, aligning his interests with those of shareholders.

While a risky move at the time, it has since become one of the smartest business decisions of his career.

Over the years, Bekker’s share options became increasingly valuable as Naspers’ investments in companies like Tencent paid off. In 2015, he exercised some options to purchase shares in Naspers.

This risky decision in 1999 to be paid in Naspers shares made him one of the richest people in South Africa.

He retired as Naspers’ CEO on 31 March 2014. On 17 April 2015, he succeeded Vosloo as chair of the Naspers board. 

In 2019, Naspers put some assets into two publicly traded companies, entertainment firm MultiChoice Group and Prosus, which contains the Tencent stake. 

Bekker still owns millions of Prosus and Naspers shares, although he sold R3.4 billion in Prosus shares on the open market through his family trust in March last year.

Following his resignation as CEO, Bekker has become increasingly reclusive and publicity-shy and tends to avoid interviews. 

However, this does not mean he has not kept busy, as the billionaire has other interests outside his stake in Naspers.

Bekker owns several wine estates in South Africa, including the well-known Babylonstoren in Stellenbosch. The estate spans nearly six acres and features architecture dating back to 1690, a farm, and an orchard vineyard.

He also owns other properties across the country and abroad, including a multi-million-pound estate, The Newt, in Somerset in the United Kingdom.

Bekker is also known for his philanthropy, with conservation and education projects lying close to his heart.