This site requires JavaScript to be enabled. Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings, or upgrade to a modern browser.

BNC#9 | Sasol CEO Simon Baloyi: Turning around an SA giant through Trump, tariffs and turmoil

Loading player...

He started out as a bursary student from a village with no electricity or running water. Now Simon Baloyi runs one of South Africa's biggest industrial employers. In his first full year as CEO (2024) he turned a loss of nearly R70 a share into double-digit profit. Baloyi's BNC#9 keynote takes us inside that turnaround: the internal battle to hold the strategy together through Trump's tariffs, the balance sheet target that will decide when dividends return, and why Sasol isn't walking away from coal just yet. This is the story of a company built on getting oil out of coal, told by the man now betting his career on getting it right.

18 Aug 2AM English South Africa Investing · Business News

Other recent episodes

BNC#9 | Wrap-up panel: Joburg, Zuma, AI, JSE v S&P, gold, small caps, and conference highlights

At the close of BNC#9, Alec Hogg sat down with David Shapiro and Piet Viljoen to unpack the conference. Viljoen made the numbers case for South Africa: bar the two big banks, every stock in his portfolio trades at a discount of thirty percent or more to what he thinks…

11 Sep 9AM 32 min

SA's Competition Commission has become a handbrake on the economy: Rob Rose

Bryan Brownrigg was never a currency trader. He sold foreign exchange to Standard Bank's institutional clients for 23 years. But when the Competition Commission decided that 28 banks had run a single conspiracy to rig the rand, his name went into the complaint anyway, and it took a decade and…

11 Sep 7AM 20 min

BNC#9 | Le Roux Q&A: Sakeliga's 2026 scorecard, BEE and FMD wins, SARB next in line

Piet le Roux runs the organisation that has taken on the South African state more than any other business group this year, and he came to BNC#9 to explain why. Sakeliga beat the government on foot and mouth disease vaccines, international airline licensing and estate agents' BEE certificates in 2026…

11 Sep 7AM 32 min

He built a $1.5bn bank. Now Revolut, Discovery Bank and PEP are circling

In this interview with Irakli Rekhviashvili, Tyme Group co-founder Coenraad Jonker gives his take on what actually protects a digital bank once the competition catches up, and why he thinks the old rules of banking no longer apply. On competitive advantage, he says: "I'm saying to my guys increasingly, I…

11 Sep 7AM 50 min

Was Oscar Pistorius convicted of the wrong crime? A 36 year advocate says groupthink sentenced him

For six years, retired senior advocate Chris Marnewick worked through the 3,000 page record of the Oscar Pistorius trial, line by line, against the judgments that decided his fate. His conclusion, set out in a new book, is that the Supreme Court of Appeal got it wrong: Pistorius should have…

11 Sep 6AM 30 min

All episodes