The Prodigy

Awarded the world’s youngest CEO of an international pharmaceutical company at the 2019 ARAB Health Conference held in Dubai, Tony McPherson is a South African success story

- Shannon Manuel

HAVING LEARNT THE VALUE

of money at a young age, Tony McPherson is now the group CEO of McPherson Holdings. It includes EmOx International, the manufacturer of the world’s only powder-based emergency oxygen. An alternative to pressurized oxygen cylinders, it’s used in emergencies such as combat territories as it’s non-explosive, requires no maintenance, and its components have an indefinite shelflife. EmOx oxygen solutions are light, weighing less than 10% of an average pressurized system. McPherson’s grandfather, founder, and inventor of EmOx™ Oxygen started grooming him to take over his pharmaceutical company when he was 17. Whilst working on the factory floor and overseeing product marketing, he demonstrated a knowledge of how to run the business when his grandfather suddenly passed away in 2017.

GQ: What made you curious about business?

Tony McPherson: I come from a family of serial entrepreneurs; having grown up surrounded by a wide range of business enterprises I used to work for during the holidays and at weekends got me interested in businesses and their inner workings, especially efficient practices.

I remember working at my family’s farmstall in Malgas on the Breede River when I was six years old, and I was already standing in the bakery with a stopwatch trying to get the team to turn over more loaves than they had the day before. The idea of a child trying to speed up or increase efficiency baffled them. My paternal grandfather, Tony McPherson Senior, inspired me from a young age. He was the chairman of various publicly listed companies – but what inspired me most was that he’d started as a salesman selling tires and worked his way up.