VENTURES AFRICA – Mercedez Benz plant in South Africa’s eastern seaboard city of East London attained a court order late on Monday aimed at forcing workers to abandon their protest. Workers at the car maker’s assembly plant had gone on a wildcat strike at the end of last week after the firm allegedly threatened to [...]

VENTURES AFRICA – The shares of South Africa’s mobile phone operator, Vodacom, lost 1.14 percent to R114.50 at the close of the JSE on Monday. Traders attributed this battering to the general state of the market on the JSE where stocks got heavy punishment. BDLive reported that Vodacom’s headline earnings per share for 12 months [...]

VENTURES AFRICA – Yahoo! Inc. and Tumblr announced today that they have reached a definitive agreement for the former to acquire the latter for ‘a total consideration of approximately $1.1 billion’, all of which is payable in cash. Tumblr will be independently operated as a separate business. And its CEO David Karp, will keep his [...]

Editor’s Note: Read a detailed story on Laurie Dippenaar, GT Ferreira and Paul Harris in the current issue of Ventures Africa Magazine   VENTURES AFRICA – There’s a new billionaire on the block. Laurie Dippenaar, a South African banker and co-founder of FirstRand, the country’s pre-eminent banking group has become the latest member of the [...]