WOW succession plan
It is in the interests of all business stakeholders that a succession plan be in place, and Who Owns Whom has implemented a board-approved plan, effective August 1, 2025. The managing director’s position has been split into two, one filled by me and the other by our current COO, Sandy Kerkhove. There are no changes to reporting lines, except that Sandy no longer reports to me, but also to the board. The intention is that this structure will continue for the next three to four years, at which time Sandy will assume the MD position. After that, I will play a key role, for which there is plenty of time to define. Please be assured I am not going anywhere. Sandy and I have been operating on this basis, which is now formalised, for the previous eighteen months.
WOWEB archive
Since 1980, WOW has accumulated a substantial amount of historical data that could be useful for research purposes, which we have housed in a new menu option on the landing page called WOWEB Archive.
The archive contains all historic (and current for ease of reference) industry reports, industry organograms, trends and global disruptor reports. We have also added all historic company organograms, the WOW e-books going back to 2014 (the last book published was in 2020) and the JSE control charts. The latter we also stopped compiling in 2020, largely due to the dominance of institutional and foreign investment on the JSE, rendering these comparisons no longer useful.
The Knowledge Centre at the Gordon Institute of Business Science in Illovo, Johannesburg, has kindly agreed to house the full set of hardcopy WOW publications (40 editions from 1980 to 2020) which can be accessed there for research purposes. Should you wish to view the books, please let me know and I will put you in touch with the GIBS Knowledge Centre.
WOWEB Database Growth
Largely driven by our clients using WOWEB and WOW Data Feeds for KYC and compliance purposes, our database has grown in several content categories in the past year:
| Content: | South Africa: | Africa: | International: |
| African industry reports: | 8.70% | ||
| Active, profiled entities: | 6.06% | 8.28% | |
| Inactive profiled entities: | 12.89% | 15.90% | 28.33% |
| Branches of active, profiled entities: | 22.85% | 5.04% | |
| Companies with ownership: | 14.22% | 8.06% | |
| Directors: | 143.42% | 130.23% | 69.96% |
| Management: | 206.94% | 130.23% | 81.53% |
| Active, profiled entities per industry: | |
| Agriculture, Hunting, Forestry and Fishing | 5.16% |
| Community, Social and Personal Services | 4.23% |
| Construction | 0.21% |
| Electricity, Gas and Water Supply | 8.50% |
| Financial Intermediation, Insurance, Real Estate and Business Services | 6.50% |
| Manufacturing | -17.79% |
| Mining and Quarrying | 0.43% |
| Transport, Storage and Communication | 1.87% |
| Wholesale and Retail Trade | 34.41% |
| Number of BEE documents/certificates: | 5.43% |
It is interesting to note the surge in requests for African industry and company reports, which could be driven by our clients exploring alternative markets. Also noteworthy to observe the significant increase in inactive, profiled entities across South Africa, Africa and internationally, as well as the decrease in the number of active, profiled entities within the manufacturing industry.
The SME Trends report published in June has attracted a lot of attention reflecting the surge of interest in this sector.
Lastly, a happy women’s month to all you wonderful women who are reading this.
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