Billionaires Rupert, Oppenheimer, Le Roux line up heirs

The fathers who control South Africa’s three largest fortunes are all 76 or older, and each has a son who stands to take over a share of what they built.

Johann Rupert, the 76-year-old chairman of Swiss luxury group Richemont, is worth about $15.4 billion (R256 billion). Nicky Oppenheimer, 81, whose family controlled the De Beers diamond business for more than 80 years, is worth about $10.8 billion (R179 billion). Michiel le Roux, 77, a co-founder of Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd., South Africa’s most valuable bank, has a fortune of about $3.8 billion (R63 billion). Together, the three are worth about $30 billion (R498 billion).

Their heirs have taken very different paths. Anton Rupert has spent the past nine years on the board of his father’s company. Jonathan Oppenheimer already runs the family’s investment office. Michiel le Roux’s son, also named Michiel, has kept his distance from Capitec and built a lending business of his own across Africa.

Anton Rupert and the luxury empire

Anton Rupert, 39, moved a step closer to the top of Richemont in September, when the board named him non-executive co-deputy chairman, alongside Bram Schot, 65, the former Audi chief executive who has served as deputy chairman since 2024. The younger Rupert, who has been a non-executive director of Richemont since 2017, oversees the board committee that guides strategy on products and communications across the group’s brands.

His father called the appointment “an important step in the Board’s long-term succession planning.”

Richemont owns some of the world’s best-known jewelry and watch brands, including Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Buccellati, IWC Schaffhausen, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Piaget and Vacheron Constantin. Johann Rupert created the group in 1988 out of the Rembrandt Group, the tobacco and liquor business founded by his father, Anton Rupert, after whom his son is named. He has chaired Richemont since 2002.

The family’s grip on the company does not come from the size of its stake. The Ruperts own about 10% of Richemont’s equity, but control just over half of its votes through a separate class of unlisted shares held by Compagnie Financière Rupert.

Johann Rupert also chairs Remgro Ltd., the Stellenbosch-based investment group whose holdings include Mediclinic, OUTsurance, FirstRand and a stake in Heineken Beverages, and Reinet Investments SCA, a Luxembourg-based investment company. The family controls Remgro through unlisted B shares that carry about 43% of the votes, and it holds the management shares that give it control of Reinet.

The Richemont appointment does not on its own give Anton Rupert control of the family’s other businesses. He has kept a low public profile, and his past roles have been at private family operations such as L’Ormarins, the Rupert wine estate in Franschhoek, and the Franschhoek Motor Museum.

The family fortune has come down in recent weeks. Richemont’s Johannesburg-listed shares closed at R3,516 on Oct. 16, about 6% below their level at the start of September, when Johann Rupert’s net worth stood at about $17.1 billion.

Jonathan Oppenheimer and the diamond money

Jonathan Oppenheimer, 56, is already at the head of his family’s business. He is executive chairman of Oppenheimer Generations, the Johannesburg-based firm that manages the family’s commercial, investment and philanthropic interests. His father is its chairman.

The family’s fortune comes mostly from diamonds. Ernest Oppenheimer founded Anglo American in 1917 and took control of De Beers in 1929. In 2012 the family sold its 40% stake in De Beers to Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash, ending more than 80 years of involvement in the world’s biggest diamond producer.

Nicky Oppenheimer joined Anglo American in 1968, served as its deputy chairman from 1983 to 2001 and chaired De Beers from 1998 to 2012. His son followed him into the business. After starting his career at the investment bank NM Rothschild & Sons in London, Jonathan Oppenheimer spent about two decades in senior roles at Anglo American and De Beers in southern Africa and London.

Since the De Beers sale, the family has put its money into a wider range of businesses. Oppenheimer Generations set up Tana Africa Capital, an investment firm that backs consumer companies in Africa, with Singapore’s Temasek, and runs the Brenthurst Foundation and the Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, a private game reserve in the Northern Cape. Jonathan Oppenheimer was educated at Harrow School in London and the University of Oxford, and has been a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace since 2018.

Michiel le Roux and a lender of his own

The younger Michiel le Roux has taken the least direct route. A Rhodes Scholar, he studied at the University of Melbourne, Stellenbosch University and Oxford, and worked in investment banking at Absa Capital and Barclays Capital before moving into private equity at Barak Fund Management.

In 2009 he volunteered for the Congress of the People, a breakaway from the ruling African National Congress, during South Africa’s general election, and wrote about the experience in a book published the following year. In 2015 he founded Unifi, a microlender that started in Zambia and has since expanded to Uganda, Tanzania and South Africa. He is its chief executive.

His father helped build one of South Africa’s biggest business success stories. Le Roux co-founded Capitec in 2001 with Jannie Mouton and Riaan Stassen, served as its first chief executive until 2004 and was chairman from 2007 to 2016. The bank, which won millions of customers with low fees and simple accounts, is now worth more than R500 billion.

Le Roux still owns more than 10% of Capitec through his investment company, Kalander Sekuriteit. In July he raised about R6.5 billion against 1,374,356 Capitec shares under a hedging and loan arrangement.

Outside the bank, his companies Fynbos Ekwiteit and Fynbos Kapitaal handle his other investments and political donations. He has been the largest reported individual donor to the Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in South Africa. Fynbos Ekwiteit is part of Red Disa Investments, the consortium that bought a controlling 74% stake in Western Province rugby, home of the Stormers team, in 2023. He also founded and chairs the Millennium Trust, which funds investigative journalism and civil society groups.

Figures were converted at R16.6 to the dollar.