AUSTRALIA'S GAIN
By Rob Rose
Gail Kelly might not be a household name in SA, but chances are that if she had remained here rather than moving to Australia, she, instead of Tom Boardman, would be heading Nedbank. Since quitting Nedbank in 1997 as the head of its...

REAL FIGURES ELUSIVE
By Leonie Theunissen and Sven Lünsche
It's all but impossible to get anything close to accurate estimates of the number of South Africans living and working abroad. A figure of 1,5m-2m has become an accepted norm of the size of the SA diaspora, though that is guesswork. ...

AN EMOTIONAL CONNECTION
By Scott Burnett
Manford Gorvy, millionaire financier, fruit farmer and one of the wealthiest men in Britain, keeps close to his SA roots. He still owns the biggest citrus grower and processor in SA, though it is now only a part of his £600m Hanover Ac...

ON TOP OF THE WORLD
By Sven Lünsche
Home to about a third of the world's cranes, the emirate of Dubai is skyscraper heaven, a permanent construction site. The world's fastest-growing city (more of a city state, in fact) plans 616 high-rise buildings by 2009, from around...

WEALTH WITH STEALTH
By Scott Burnett
Author Rian Malan calls him a "stealth bomber of the music industry", and the Financial Times named him "most reclusive" on its alternative rich list of UK billionaires last year. But by all accounts Clive Calder is just a norm...

BILLITON'S STRATEGY MAN
By Nicky Smith
For a man who sounds disturbingly like flamboyant Afrikaans entertainer Nataniël, BHP Billiton's brilliant young CE, Marius Kloppers, is being taken very seriously indeed. Recently named the 18th most powerful person in business by ...

FROM GREY TO WALL STREET
By Stuart Theobald
Vincent Mai still has something of a Karoo farm boy about him, even though he now chairs the oldest private equity firm in the US and is a stalwart of the Wall Street investment banking establishment. "Though my life is here in Ame...

RETIREMENT NOT AN OPTION
By Scott Burnett
At 76, Bellevue-born Sir Mark Weinberg shows no sign of slowing down. President of St James's Place Plc, one of the UK's top private-client wealth managers, with £16bn under management, he is a serial innovator in insurance and investm...

ENTREPRENEUR EXTRAORDINAIRE
By Stuart Theobald
There are few subjects that David Potter is not comfortable talking about. A conversation with the former scientist, academic and entrepreneur spans theoretical physics, stock market crashes, the computer industry and his early childho...

HI-TECH MARKET MOVER
By Duncan McLeod
In a few short years, Roelof Botha, grandson of former foreign affairs minister Pik Botha, has become one of the movers and shakers in Silicon Valley. But the Pretoria-born Botha has not forgotten his roots and, an avid Blue Bu...

A CULTURE OF GIVING BACK
By Jacqui Pile
Despite having left the country in 1975, Stanley Bergman still has an SA accent, albeit with a slight New York drawl. For 17 years Bergman has been chairman and CEO of Henry Schein, which provides medical and dental and veterinary s...

SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR
By Stuart Theobald
David Altschuler is not one for the limelight. He reluctantly agrees to meet the FM after some negotiation. But eventually we sit down in a coffee shop just below his office off Piccadilly in London. And the soft-spoken, jeans-...

MANY OPEN DOORS
By Sasha Planting
At the age of 68 Sir David King is not interested in slowing down. Last month he stepped down as chief scientific adviser to the British prime minister and head of the office of science & technology there. He held the position for seve...

A LIFE STUDYING CELL BIOLOGY
By Sasha Planting
Sydney Brenner likes travelling and drinking good wine. More than that he loves scientific research and stirring up the scientific world. In this vein he recently predicted that if human life continues on this planet as we know it, by 2020 consciousn...