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Photo by Avusa on Mail and Gaurdian

Koos Bekker

Chairman

Naspers

POSITION

Chairman

COMPANY

Naspers

COUNTRY

South Africa

AGE

71 years

Website

Naspers

Est. Net Worth

$2.3 Billion Forbes

SCENE

Lifestyle & Culture

SOCIAL

Twitter

What makes Koos Bekker a Global Shaker?

The 66-year-old South African is widely-considered Africa’s most powerful media mogul. As Chairman and the largest individual shareholder of Naspers, a multi-billion-dollar media conglomerate that operates in 130 countries and is listed on the London and Johannesburg Stock Exchanges, Koos Bekker is often compared to Rupert Murdoch, the Australian CEO of News Corp.

Bekker controls seven of the top 10 magazines and six of the top 10 newspapers in South Africa; pay-TV giant DSTV; and Brazilian publisher inlocomedia, which reaches an audience of 50 million users in the country through a network of more than 600 partner applications. He has spent hundreds of millions of dollars gobbling up significant stakes in some of the web’s most valued internet outfits, including a 30% stake in London-listed Russian Internet giant, Mail.ru. Naspers also owns stakes in 24.com, Mxit Lifestyle and QQ.

Bekker was Chief Executive of Naspers from 1997 to 2014, becoming Chairman in 2015. Bekker holds an honorary doctorate in commerce from Stellenbosch University and an MBA degree from Columbia University, New York.

Tags: journalism, TV

Last updated: May 21, 2019