The highly-anticipated Conduct of Financial Institutions (COFI) Bill is set to have major ramifications across several industries. Although the Bill is unlikely to be tabled before Parliament rises ahead of the elections on May 29 2024, marketplaces are both excited and cautious. The Bill aims to consolidate thousands of pages of disparate financial legislation and create a single standard of industry conduct. This will impact financial institutions, such as banks, insurers, credit providers, and financial advisors, and non-financial institutions, like retailers, fintech, telcos and other organisations providing financial services. “A lot of work and consultation has gone into this legislation with

Attacq plans to reduce its reliance on diesel generators used to keep the lights on at its shopping malls, opting for solar and battery power to cope with the rising costs from the energy crisis. Ongoing load shedding has harmed retailers such as Shoprite, Woolworths, Pick n Pay and Mr Price, whose recent results showed a dent in sales and rise in operating costs as they crank up diesel generators to power stores. On Monday, 13 March, fashion retailer TFG said its African business would lose about R1bn in retail turnover because of the power outages. The retailers have said

Retail in the Cape Town CBD, which accounted for more than a third of the businesses operating in the city centre last year, has proved resilient despite ongoing Covid shocks. Of the 2,981 businesses operating in the central city last year, 39% were retail venues, with a total of 81 new retail stores opening in town during 2021. This is one of the encouraging numbers coming out of the latest State of Cape Town Central City Report 2021 – A Year in Review (SCCR), published recently by the Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CCID). New openings With the added

According to JLL’s South African Real Estate Investment Review and Outlook 2021/22, the property market struggled through the Covid-19 pandemic with virtually all sectors registering a decline in performance. Reporting is focused on deal flow registered in the 2021 calendar year and compares investment volumes in 2021 to deal flow over the previous four years.“Deal flow value across the office and industrial declined compared to 2020, with reprieve in 2021 attributed to the retail and alternative and living property sectors. Student accommodation and filling stations emerged as a growing asset class in 2021, and demand remained rife for prime logistics

The Q1 2022 FNB Property Broker Survey has pointed to a recent increase in demand for retail space to rent, as perceived by the brokers surveyed.This turnaround for the better, from a retailer and landlord point of view, appears to reflect the normalisation in economic activity and societal interaction in recent times, with Covid-19 fading as a threat, and lockdown regulations having largely disappeared, resulting in greater rates of new business formation and perhaps expansion. We ask respondents the question as to whether they believe vacancy rates have increased, decreased or remained the same over six months prior? Out of