Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa October 2016 | Page 11

JEFF ZIDEL

A

t the end of July 2016, Jeff Zidel, the highly
regarded Co-founder of Resilient, was
named as the new President of the SACSC.
This appointment marks a 45 year career spanning
all aspects of the South African property industry.
Currently he is the Deputy Chairman of JSE-listed
Fortress Income Fund and Non-executive Director of
NEPI, as well as a Director of the SAPOA, threetimes past president of the Roodepoort Chamber of
Commerce.
“South Africa has one of the world’s leading
shopping centre industries. There is a powerful
opportunity to capitalise on our growing international
profile as we become more active in the arena of global
retail,” says Zidel. “It’s important to showcase the
exceptional calibre of our capabilities and make it
clear that we are worth taking seriously – both South
Africa and Africa as a continent, and our skilled
professionals.”
Over his extensive and distinguished career, Zidel
has played a hands-on role in an admirable number
of landmark shopping centre developments and
deals, from running an estate agency to developing
strip malls throughout Lesotho. He was the previous
chairman of Proptrax (which has 2 ETFs listed
on JSE) and he has been 3 times past president of
Roodepoort Chamber of Commerce. Zidel was also
the winner of 2010 ABSA Jewish Business Achiever
of the year as well as being part of Nandos early
expansion from 8 to 120 stores.
As the new President of SACSC, he has plans to
build on the foundations that have already been put in
place and find new ways to expand horizons for South
Africa’s community of shopping centre owners and
retailers.

First Investment

“In 1985 saw a wonderful opportunity to develop strip
shopping centres throughout Lesotho,” says Zidel on
his first major Property Investment. “The Lesotho
miners excelled and had the best return rate on the
SA mines. The SA and Lesotho Governments agreed
with the miners to pay them a third of their wages
to them and two-thirds to their families in Lesotho.
Lots of disposable income very limited shopping.”
All the land belongs to The Kingdom, and so the
plan was would be to lease the land from them. They
then planned to enter into a sub - lease agreement,
which is usually for 25 years with 3 ten-year options.
“Our first land rental was only payable on completion
of the shopping centre (so very small holding cost). We
eventually built eight Centres throughout Lesotho.”
www.reimag.co.za

Zidel paid in cash for the first deal, then bonded
the completed centre to build the next one. The
national tenants traded exceptionally well and it was
not uncommon for them to receive twice the base
rental from turnover clauses. Thus they were the first
development in most of the towns, and all subsequent
development sprung up around their shopping centres.

Lessons Learned

- Don’t be afraid to go into new areas
- Develop where the national tenants want to trade
- Overcome cumbersome bureaucracy, In our first
development we needed ministerial consent four
separate times. We engaged with Minister of Interior
and by our third development only needed one
consent.
- When social crants were introduced into SA (it
had the same effect as the Lesotho families receiving
miners salaries) boom times for ourselves and other
developers of shopping centres especially in rural
towns and townships.

Significant Deals and Insights

On 6 December 2002, Jeff Zidel, Des de Beer and
Barry Stuhler listed Resilient Property Income Fund
on the JSE with a market capitalization of just under
R500 million.
“It has been an amazing journey, the “ Resilient
family of funds” now consists of 6 separately listed
property funds with a combined market capitalization
of over R180 Billion.”
These include Resilient, Fortress, Lodestone,
Rockcastle, Greenbay and NEPI (New Europe Property Investments). NEPI, Greenbay and Rockcastle
all have JSE and offshore listings and invest mainly
in shopping centres in Eastern and Central Europe,
with the largest investments in Romania (NEPI) and
Poland (Rockcasle) and Slovenia (Greenbay)
Resilient develops dominant shopping centres in
mainly non metropolitan areas, and has substantial
holdings in Fortress and the offshore companies.
Fortress develops large logistic distribution ware-

BIOGRAPHY

Age: 65
Married: Yes, to Lynn for 38 years
Children: Twin daughters Sindy and Nicole
Current reading: Elon Musk - Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest
for a Fantastic Future
Motto: Worrying does not help, do something about the problem.

OCTOBER 2016 SA Real Estate Investor

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