South African billionaire Koos Bekker cashes out $500 million to build luxury hotels

South African billionaire Koos Bekker has raised about $500 million by selling shares in Naspers Ltd. and Prosus NV since 2023, money his family trust set aside for construction at the luxury hotel estates he owns with his wife in South Africa, England and Italy.

The trust, which holds Bekker's economic stake in the two technology investors he chairs, sold Prosus stock in three rounds, in March 2023, December 2024 and December 2025, and added a block of Naspers shares in the last round, according to disclosures to the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, Euronext Amsterdam and the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets. The sales brought in about €412 million and R860.5 million, worth about $500 million at exchange rates on the days of the trades and about $513 million at current rates.

Every notice gave the same reason. The trust sold "to fund building operations at hospitality venues located in South Africa, the UK and Italy" in which it has an interest, Naspers said in its December 2025 filing. The 2023 and 2024 announcements referred to building operations at hotels. None of the filings break the proceeds down by property or say how much went to each estate.

Three rounds of selling

The first sale ended a decade without disposals. Between March 24 and March 28, 2023, the trust sold 2.5 million Prosus shares at prices of €67.68 to €70.66, raising about €173.3 million, or roughly $187 million at the time. Prosus said then that the trust had not sold Naspers or Prosus shares since 2013 and that it was keeping three-quarters of its Prosus interest.

The trust's Prosus holding then grew to 19.6 million shares in September 2023 through a restructuring of the Naspers group rather than through purchases, Dutch regulatory filings show. On Dec. 16, 17 and 18, 2024, it sold 3.9 million of those shares at volume-weighted average prices of about €40 each. That raised roughly €156.9 million, about $165 million at the time, and left the trust with four-fifths of its prior stake.

The third round, from Dec. 17 to Dec. 19, 2025, was the first to include Naspers. The trust sold 792,800 Naspers N ordinary shares on the Johannesburg exchange for R860.5 million ($51.7 million) at an average of R1,085.43 each. It also sold 1,556,807 Prosus shares at average prices of €51.92 to €53.46, raising about €81.7 million, or around $96 million at the time. In each company it kept 90% of what it held before.

All of the trades were on-market sales. None of the announcements disclosed a pledge, collar or other hedging arrangement over the shares.

Both stocks have fallen since. Prosus shares traded at about €36 in Amsterdam this week, roughly a third below the prices the trust received in December, and Naspers stock at about R722 is down by a similar margin from the trust's average sale price.

What Bekker still owns

After the December 2025 sales the trust held about 14.2 million Prosus shares, based on its filings with the Dutch regulator. Naspers' 2026 annual report shows Bekker with an indirect beneficial interest in 7,646,635 Naspers N shares at March 31. At recent prices those stakes are worth about €516 million ($577 million) and R5.5 billion ($331 million), or a little more than $900 million together.

He also holds an indirect 25% interest in Wheatfields 221 Proprietary Ltd., which controls 899,940 Naspers A shares and 1,207,198 Prosus A1 shares. Those shares carry 1,000 votes each and were not part of the sales.

Bekker, 73, is a non-executive director and received $704,000 in fees from Naspers in the year to March 2026, covering his roles as chairman, on board committees and on the Tencent Holdings Ltd. board. The annual report says he gives the after-tax equivalent of all his director's fees to education.

The estates

Bekker and his wife, Karen Roos, a former editor of Elle Decoration South Africa, bought Babylonstoren, a Cape Dutch farm founded in 1692 in the Drakenstein Valley, in 2007 and turned it into a hotel, garden and food business. They bought Hadspen House in Somerset, England, in 2013 and opened it as The Newt in 2019.

Their hospitality group now also includes Vignamaggio, a wine estate near Greve in Chianti in Tuscany, Over-Amstel Boerderij near Amsterdam, The Story of Emily in Cornwall and Blou, a set of eight cottages at Keurboomstrand on South Africa's southern coast. In June, The Newt opened Yarlington Lodge, a 16-bedroom house in a nearby village that rents for exclusive use from £10,500 ($13,900) a night. Some local residents have pushed back as the Somerset estate has grown.

Companies House records show how much capital the English business has absorbed. Emily Estate (UK) Ltd., the company behind The Newt, had issued share capital of £393.4 million after a share allotment in September 2022. A second allotment that month lifted it to £538.4 million. New shares issued in March 2025 took it to £683.4 million, and another issue in October 2025 brought it to £703.4 million ($930 million). The company is controlled through a trust.

The March 2025 issue, worth £145 million ($192 million), came three months after the December 2024 Prosus sale. The share sale notices do not name Emily Estate, and the company's filings do not say where the new capital came from.

Bekker co-founded the pay-TV business M-Net and was a founding director of mobile operator MTN Group Ltd. He ran Naspers from 1997 to 2014 and has been chairman since 2015. In 2001 Naspers paid about $32 million for 46.5% of Tencent, a stake that grew into one of the most profitable venture bets on record. Prosus, which Naspers listed in Amsterdam in 2019 and still controls, holds more than 20% of the Chinese internet company today.