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Women in Construction
T he prestigious event took place at Gallagher Convention Centre and was hosted by the City of Joburg – alongside NHBRC as a gold sponsor, CETA, SEDA Construction Incubator and The City of Cape Town’ s Transport Authority, as the bronze sponsors of the event. Over 300 guests from the construction, cement and concrete industry applauded the finalists and celebrated the various winners of the 2016 Women in Construction Awards.
The Women in Construction Awards evolved through a need to recognize and celebrate the role of women in the construction, cement and concrete industry. The awards, which comprise of both individual and organisational categories, acknowledge the increasing importance of women in the industry. The call for nominations for the Women in Construction Awards resulted in 37 nominations. A panel of judges – which consisted of 19 global industry experts – identified five individual finalists, representative of three African countries and six organisational finalists. The organisational awards acknowledged organisations which have stepped up and developed women’ s roles through innovative training programmes as well showing their commitment to developing the careers of women in the industry.
Exposed: Levitt’ s kickback racket
A daming forensic report about financial wrongdoing at controversial Auction Alliance( AA) has implicated a string of auctioneers, liquidators, attorneys, bank officials and prominent individuals in hundreds of millions of rand of secret commission payments.
Although some similar transactions have been reported in the past, the forensic report, a copy of which Business Day has in is possession, shows how they were only the tip of the iceberg involving financial wrongdoing at the firm.
Auction Alliance and its founder and MD Rael Levitt brought an urgent interdict in the High Court in Johannesburg last night to prevent Business Day from publishing the report’ s contents.
However, Judge Lotter Wepener turned down the application, with costs. The report is the product of a forensic investigation that was carried out by auditor Allan Greyling in 2012, ironically at the behest of the board of Auction Alliance. The report claims that hefty commissions were paid to counterparties that may have encouraged early foreclosures in order to facilitate auction business.
Retail Cannibalisation
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etail cannibalisation is a growing reality in South Africa and, until now, it has been all too easy to place the blame for this squarely at the feet of shopping centre developers.
However, on closer inspection, Marius Muller, chief executive of leading shopping centre investor Pareto, believes this retail cannibalisation is largely being driven by retailers themselves.
Muller shared his views on the controversial issue at the South African Council of Shopping Centres annual research conference, held in Sandton recently. He was joined by Maurice de Villiers of Woolworths and Craig Coetzee of Spar in a panel discussion on retail cannibalisation moderated by executive director at MSCI, Phil Barttram. Cannibalisation refers to a situation where a retailer opens a new store location close to an existing store. When this happens, the existing store loses customers to the new store. Retailers are usually willing to take the risk of cannibalisation if they believe the new store will also attract new customers that do not currently shop at the retailer, boosting combined sales. However, this isn’ t always the result.
“ Retail value is being eroded by retailers chasing the top line at the expense of defending what they already have,” says Muller.
6 JUNE 2016 SA Real Estate Investor www. reimag. co. za