One Name, Two Investors, $4 Billion

He bounced back to build the $4.3-billion PSG empire. Now Jannie Mouton is not your average billionaire – he was fired from his own company, recovered to make a billion with his new company and believes the bad times in his country mean good times for investors. In his footsteps is his 41-year-old son, Piet, who has spent life embroiled in stocks and shares.

- Jay Caboz

It happened one Saturday afternoon; the meat was on the fire, the smoke was in the air, and a father sat his 13-year-old son down for a paternal chat that was to change his life.

The father was billionaire investor Jannie Mouton – known as the ‘Boere Buffett’. The son was Piet Mouton who was to grow up into a multi-million-dollar investor. Billionaire and son have beefed up PSG, the investment holding company worth $4.3 billion (market cap) that has spread to a combined market capitalization of approximately $12.5 billion in just 22 years.

“Growing up in our family, at the age of 13, I already knew what options and futures were… It was a new thing on the JSE and my dad came home and, at a braai on a Saturday, he sat me and my brother down and explained it to us. So here I had some great knowledge that I didn’t know what to do with at school, but I understood the concept of options and futures,” says Piet.

“[PSG] was part of our life growing up, the entire business concept. Being mathematically inclined, [my future idea] wasn’t necessarily to go into business with my father, but it was to go into business.”

This was the incredible inside story told from the two men as FORBES AFRICA sat down at 35 Church Street, Stellenbosch, in the heart of the quaint South African wine farm to hear how one family built an investment giant.

“My wife once told me that was your favorite child, PSG, you never ask anything about Jan or Piet, or Charity. It’s only PSG, PSG. The whole braai [barbeque], the whole evening was talking about PSG. It was very much part and parcel of how we started,” says Jannie.