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JSE leadership is giving the old boys club a run for their money

Marc Ashton
By Marc Ashton
8 Jan 2025
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The current leadership of the JSE deserve some recognition for the way they’ve reimagined the role of the bourse in South Africa.

Maybe it is just the first week of 2025 and I have drunk the optimist’s Kool-Aid but a recent Daily Maverick article from former investment banker and CEO Paul Miller (“South Africa’s public markets show promising signs despite delisting concerns”) gave me pause for thought around the JSE.

As somebody who has worn a couple of different hats in the world of finance and financial markets, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) has always intrigued me as a stakeholder. While the overriding narrative in recent years has been around the delistings trend, the current leadership of the JSE deserve some recognition for the way they’ve reimagined the role of the bourse in South Africa. 

My first real exposure to the importance of the JSE came about on 25 May (ironically my birthday) 2012, when it announced changes to its rules that had previously required all listed businesses to publish their financial results in long form in both English and Afrikaans media. This had effectively been a “subsidy” for the business media sector since the late 1960s and when it was announced it sent shockwaves through the industry.

Media houses BDFM (Business Day Financial Mail) and Sake24/Sake Beeld immediately appealed to the JSE to reverse its decision, but this fell on deaf ears and started a chain of events which saw the decimation of business media newsrooms across the country.

Read more: Media24 shutdowns — digital to retain 66 journos, but 334 jobs still on the line

As time passed, this led me to my second standout interaction with the JSE. As I took on more senior roles in the industry, I was expected to try to drive revenue models for media and I ended up sitting in a meeting with former JSE chief executive Nicky Newton-King, where I pitched the importance of partnering with the media to drive retail investor participation with a focus on exposure for small-cap shares on the JSE. It was gently broken to me that the JSE wasn’t really there to serve retail investors – especially those who were interested in small-caps… but they did love my enthusiasm and wished me well on my endeavours in supporting this important segment of the market.

Fractional share ownership


The third interaction was a concept meeting with Charles Savage, the CEO of Purple Group and founder of EasyEquities. Charles pitched this idea of fractional ownership of shares and a future where a shareholder in Famous Brands would be able to buy shares at the same time as they were ordering their Steers burger. There was always free beer at the Purple Group offices in the afternoon so I would admire Charles’s energy but circle back to the point: “Yeah, nice idea, but the JSE will never let it catch on.”

Two million plus users later, he might have been onto something – but Charles and his team will tell you that it wasn’t an easy sell at the time. It took them six years to reach their first 500,000 users – the entrenched network of brokers were satisfied with the status quo and retail investors weren’t sexy at a couple hundred rands a month. 

Enter current chief executive Dr Leila Fourie in 2019. 

There is a photo taken early on in her tenure when she was addressing a group of school kids who I think had participated in the JSE Schools Challenge. She ended the session by taking a selfie with the kids in the background. First, what is the CEO of the JSE doing mixing with the common folk? Second, a selfie?! That’s not how things are done.

More than 10 years later, JSE CEO Leila Fourie continues to take selfies with the winners of the popular JSE Investment Challenge, demonstrating her passion when it comes to financial literacy.
Photo supplied by JSE



I say that a little tongue-in-cheek, but I believe Dr Fourie broke a stereotype of how the JSE leadership team should interact with stakeholders and was prepared to reimagine its role in South African financial markets. From an institution which was very much perceived to be an “old boys club”, the JSE leadership team now includes some very dynamic individuals, including Valdene Reddy, director: capital markets, Vuyo Lee, marketing and corporate affairs, and last but not least, Cleola Kunene, head of SME development, who isn’t in the exco but deserves a special mention.

For me, as an outsider looking in, they have achieved a blend of big-picture strategic elements while also focusing on some of the broader ecosystem issues. At a strategic level they have worked on the roll-out of the “fast-track listing” project which aims to encourage secondary listings on the JSE from UK-, Australia- and Hong Kong-based businesses. In December, this brought two new property groups to the JSE. That can’t be an easy sell. 

A statistic that will stun many people is that there is currently more than R85.6-billion in unclaimed assets and R4.5-billon of that is unclaimed dividends. It has been a pain point for both the company and financial services sector for years as this money is sitting tied up in banks, insurers, asset managers and pension funds. Can you imagine the significant social impact on the country if these funds could find their way to their rightful owners? In February 2024, the JSE took the lead on driving its goal of putting this R4.5-billion back into the economy.   

On the ecosystem front, it is encouraging to see the JSE leadership recognising that the majority of big companies start out as small businesses. Access to funding is one of the biggest challenges that entrepreneurs in South Africa face and the JSE needed to find ways to meaningfully contribute to supporting small and medium enterprises (SMEs). While not necessarily direct drivers of current revenue, the JSE Private Placements market and the SME development initiatives show a willingness to collaborate with other role players.   

The JSE has such a critical role to play. Not only is it expected to create vibrant capital markets in South Africa, it also has to market us to the world as an investment destination at a time when we have no shortage of detractors. The JSE leadership team doesn’t get the credit it deserves but they are putting in the hard yards behind the scenes, and if the stars align in 2025, we may start to see the fruits of their labour. DM

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