South African billionaire Koos Bekker to retire as Naspers chair by 2028

Koos Bekker will retire as chairman of Naspers and Prosus in the financial year ending March 2028, closing out three decades at a company he turned from an Afrikaans newspaper publisher into one of the largest technology investors in the world.

He set the date at Wednesday's joint annual meeting, in front of a room full of investors who had come to vote against his board.

Norges Bank Investment Management, which runs Norway's sovereign wealth fund of roughly $2 trillion, had signalled opposition. So had the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the California State Teachers' Retirement System, funds overseen by the New York City Comptroller, Storebrand of Norway and Van Lanschot Kempen of the Netherlands. Their complaints were about how Naspers is governed and how it pays its executives.

None of it was going to change anything, and that is the part of Bekker's legacy that will outlast him.

Naspers has 961,193 shares of a special class, each carrying 1,000 votes. Everyone else holds about 178 million shares with one vote apiece. Bekker built up a substantial block of the high-voting stock while he was chief executive, and the structure has meant that shareholder revolts at Naspers end the same way every year.

The gap has been widening, and the company widened it while trying to satisfy the same investors now objecting. Naspers trades below the value of the assets it owns, so it has been buying back ordinary shares to close that discount, 257 million of them since 2022. The ordinary count has fallen 59%. The 961,193 high-voting shares were left alone. Insider voting power has risen from roughly 69% to roughly 84% without anyone buying a share, on Billionaires.Africa calculations from the company's own meeting disclosures.

Bekker ran Naspers as chief executive from 1997 to March 2014, stepped away for a year, and came back as chairman in April 2015. Before that he led the founding team behind M-Net and MultiChoice in 1985 and was among the founders of MTN. He holds an MBA from Columbia, an LLB from Wits and a degree from Stellenbosch, and he restored Babylonstoren, a 600-acre Western Cape estate built around buildings dating to 1690.

One decision defined the rest. Naspers put money into a small Chinese messaging company called Tencent in 2001, and almost everything the group is worth today still traces back to it. Naspers spun assets into MultiChoice and Prosus in 2019 and has been selling down the Tencent holding since, now below 25%.

Fabricio Bloisi, who took over as chief executive in July 2024, is being asked to find something comparable. He holds an award Prosus calls a Moonshot, potentially worth $100 million in Naspers and Prosus stock by 2029. To collect it, the group's market value has to double to $168 billion by June 30, 2028, about three months after Bekker's departure window closes.

Storebrand said the sum sits well above market norms. Institutional Shareholder Services, the largest proxy adviser in the business, told clients the conditions "appear unlikely to be met within the performance period." Bloisi took $1.8 million in the year to March, less than a third of what group finance chief Nico Marais was paid, because Naspers gave him one award covering his full four-year contract instead of annual grants.

The governance objections were narrower than the pay ones. Storebrand and Van Lanschot Kempen said they would vote against two directors, Rachel Jafta, who has served 20 years on the board, and Mark Sorour, a former Naspers executive who took a board seat without a cooling-off period. ISS recommended against both. Glass Lewis opposed Jafta and called for the rejection of Prosus's entire remuneration policy.

Naspers said the share structure remains in place and that the company stays "committed to an open and ongoing dialogue" with shareholders. Prosus shares are down 28% this year.

Bekker is 73 and has been at or near the top of Naspers since Nelson Mandela was president. What he has not settled is what happens to the shares that gave him control. Naspers has not said whether the special class survives his departure, and no successor has been named.