Much has been written and much will still be written about the Steinhoff saga but after listening to some of the testimony and reading the bit below…there is only one conclusion that can be made and that is this: Ethics aside, Marcus Jooste’s biggest mistake was failure to diversify. It’s a classic school-boy error of over-confidence. We have seen it before with the collapse of Lehman Brothers where employees had their entire life savings invested in just one share and we will see it again in the future.
If there is a financial planning lesson here it is this: diversification is essential to a successful long-term investment strategy. Even if you are the CEO of a huge company you should not have all your money invested in just your company share. You need to diversify and this means holding a wide-range of different asset classes and currencies. Failure to diversify will ultimately result in failure to accumulate wealth!
“Jooste family trust held R3bn in Steinhoff shares on day of fallout
On the day of the Steinhoff share price fallout, Jooste’s family trust which has an investment company Mayfair, lost R3bn. The company held 68 million Steinhoff shares.”
