Publications
Partners
Markus Jooste's death at this moment, when South African authorities have finally issued an arrest warrant against him, will come as a disappointment to those who have seen their own lives, families and livelihoods destroyed by the corporate collapse of Steinhoff, writes James-Brent Styan.
Markus Jooste, who died on Thursday, aged 63, was a self-made billionaire who worked himself up from nothing.
By all accounts, he was a brilliant man, with his roots in Pretoria, where he worked at the Receiver of Revenue for years. He became the financial director at a small furniture factory in Ga-Rankuwa, called Gomma-Gomma. This was where his path crossed with that of a German retailer, called Bruno Steinhoff, a man who had come to South Africa post-1994 to invest in a country in which he saw tremendous potential.
