Who owns the South African Reserve Bank?
The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is a privately owned central bank.
In fact, it is possible for almost anyone to buy shares in the SARB.
Since its establishment, the Reserve Bank has always been privately owned. Today the Bank has more than 630 shareholders and its shares are traded on an Over the counter share transfer facility market (OTCSTF market) co-ordinated within the Reserve Bank. Except for the provision of the SA Reserve Bank Act that no individual shareholder may hold more than 10 000 shares of the total number of 2 000 000 issued shares, there is no limitation on shareholding. After allowing for certain provisions, payment of company tax on profits, transfers to reserves and dividend payments of not more than 10 cents per share to shareholders, the surplus of the Bank’s earnings is paid to the Government. The Bank’s operations are therefore not driven by a profit motive, but by serving the best interests of all the people in South Africa.
Is it a good thing for a central bank to be privately owned?
Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes its laws.
If we believe Rothschild, then I suppose the answer to my question is:
It depends on who does the owning.
I mulled over the fact that the SARB is privately owned for several days.
After carefully weighing up all the factors and, given the SARB’s and our government’s track records, I realized that I definately sleep better at night, knowing that our central bank is privately owned.
I find articles like this one rather bothersome.
April 19th, 2009 at 01:05 pm
Brilliant series of articles!
What tickles my noodle is how can somebody own shares in the “company” that creates money when they can effectively control the price of their shares. In other words, if you own enough shares in the SARB, you can theoretically control how much your own share is worth by altering the money supply.
April 19th, 2009 at 01:34 pm
PS, you need a email notification plugin for when people post replies, it’s hard to follow a thread if you don’t know when somebody replied.
April 19th, 2009 at 02:24 pm
@Re@per:
1. Email notification added.
2. I agree with you, it’s ridiculous to buy shares in a company with money that was created and the supply of which is controlled by that company.
However, I have a feeling that the SARB has good intentions. From what I’ve seen, their monetary policy really have been in the best interest of most South Africans.
For example, when looking at the “global economic crisis”, South Africa is quite well off compared to most other countries. This is mostly because the SARB constantly kept hiking the repo rate to combat inflation, since 2006.
If the government owned the SARB, we may have been in an entirely different situation.
April 19th, 2009 at 06:49 pm
We are in a much better situation than the US at the moment and I do agree that if the government had to run the reserve bank, we’d pretty much be in the same situation as Zimbabwe with hyper inflation.
Is the South African Reserve Bank controlled by international “share holders” or are the share holders South African?
Where does the Reserve Bank “borrow” its money from? Is it created out of nothing or is there a world bank from which all reserve banks borrow money?
April 20th, 2009 at 09:29 am
@Re@Per
Those are some very good questions.
I don’t know who the SARB’s shareholders are, and as far as I understand the SARB can just create currency out of nothing. In the past the Rand was linked to physical gold reserves, but currently it is simply paper.
I’m also sure the SARB can borrow from the World Bank and from other countries. If they have done or still do I’m not sure. This is another interesting question – why would you borrow money from someone else if you can just create it yourself?
I know that shareholding is regulated so that
However, this regulation was only brought in some time after the establishment of the SARB. Individuals who owned more than 10,000 shares before may not buy any more shares, but they don’t have to sell the shares they still hold.
Do you have any info?
May 3rd, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Wish I had more info, the only other info I have are from US based sources, which is probably irrelevant to an extend when it comes to South Africa.
What I do know is that the Anglo Boer war might have something to do with this in some way (I believe the shareholders are mostly Brittish), my history is a bit rusty but from what I’ve seen in the documentary The Venus Project, the world bank is known for its tendencies to convert countries into paper based currencies while taking over their natural resources and if I remember correctly, the Anglo Boer War was about exactly that, Britain wanted our gold and Diamonds (which they got in the end)Will dig up some information when I have time, am curious myself.
May 5th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Any comments on a german shareholder who basicly own(51%) the bank.Surely that does not sound promising.What if he wants out?
May 5th, 2009 at 12:33 pm
@Re@per
Please share if you do find any more info.
@Pierre
This is fascinating.
Where did you find out that there is a German shareholder who holds 51% of the SARB? Is this confirmed or just speculation?
May 19th, 2009 at 02:05 pm
PLEASE WOUD SOMEONE INFORM ME HOW TO BUY SOUTH AFRICAN RESERVE BANK SHARES. I WILL APRECIATE ANY INFORMATION
May 19th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
@Ampie
You can find info on how to buy SARB shares here:
How to buy SARB shares
June 13th, 2009 at 07:57 pm
Is it a wise investment @ R10 a share?
June 14th, 2009 at 02:41 pm
@Ohio
In short, I don’t have the foggiest.
The SARB’s financial statements are here: SARB Financial Statements
I saw that shares are on offer for about R10 per share. But looking at the fundamentals for the SARB is not meaningful. You can’t analyze the SARB like a normal company.
Dividends are limited to 10c per share, i.e. @R10 per share that is a maximum dividend yield of 1%. Which is bad.
Furthermore, excess profits are paid to government – it’s not used for growth or expansion. Who wants to invest in a company like that?
The only reason I can think of to buy shares in the SARB as an investment is for potential capital growth in the share price.
And I think capital growth in the share price will be mostly due to sentiment based almost entirely on browny points for being able to say you own a part of the SARB.
June 20th, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Firstly Francois, thanks for a great article! As a result of my age and lack of knowledge/understanding of the financial markets, this share is affordable enough and to a certain extent, less volatile than those traded on the JSE.
I’m a high school student with some savings, looking for something to invest in as a long term investment. After what you revealed about the SARB, the share looks much less attractive. If I may ask you for advice, should I look at other “over the counter (OTC)” share opportunities? I just would like to use my savings wisely.
June 21st, 2009 at 03:27 pm
@Ohio: If you’re looking for long term, get into the property market (interest rates are down meaning house prices will start to skyrocket in the near future meaning you’ll make your money back on most properties bought on or below market value, especially especially REO deals), if you want to play the stock market, use money that you can afford to lose, experienced stock brokers are making a killing in this bull market, but most are not and even more are losing bigtime.
June 21st, 2009 at 03:08 pm
PS, I’m starting a newsletter containing opportunities and advice for the soon-to-be Tycoon with the idea of being in touch with tycoon minded people which will make new projects easier to pull of in the future, send me your email address and I’ll add you once I have the mailing list up and running.
Email address is jan@mycee.com
June 22nd, 2009 at 09:19 am
@Ohio
Well done for starting to learn about investments while you’re still at school!
I wish I started learning about these things earlier.
It’s difficult for me to give you advice about what to invest in. I don’t know what you want to get out of it, how much money you have available, how quickly you need to be able to convert your investments back to cash, how much risk you want to take and so on.
If you just have a few thousand rand and you want to make a fairly safe investment, that should offer fair growth if you leave it for a few years, I think the best is probably to invest in a unit trust (they pool the money from all the investors in their fund and then invest it in a whole bunch of shares).
I don’t know much about things traded “over the counter”, except that they are usually more risky, because they’re not regulated.
Shares or derivatives traded on an exchange, like the JSE, have to comply with the rules of that exchange. The transactions are also regulated by the exchange.
August 7th, 2009 at 04:04 pm
Thanks for the advice guys! Jan/Reaper, my add is voz5400@yahoo.com
September 11th, 2009 at 07:41 pm
Sorry for going missing for such a long time, been spending day and night testing the ins and outs of everything that could make potential money, got burned here and there (especially when testing out new ideas and stepping into the unknown) but nothing major thanks to stop losses and also found a couple of very lucrative ways of investing, new ways that limits your risk but exponentially increases gains.
Futures and Options trading (as well as a few statistical methods to generate solid income from normal gambling which I consider similar to options and futures trading if you know what influences the outcomes, yet I’ve been getting a constant 30-300% gains over the last 2 months with a few small losses in the beginning)
Investing in the SARB? There’s no way I’m putting money in there, it’ll probably be losing against inflation anyway (something which the property market is very handy for), even bonds have better returns if you do a small bit of research.
My investment / gambling blog is investmentgambler.co.za
Will be posting anything useful I come across on that blog.
Only after seeing how quickly money CAN grow if trading / investing in the right places (also thanks to compounding) did I realise that what Francois is preaching is golden advice, every R1 you invest is another fortune in the future (just don’t squander it on volatile stock, that’s why I prefer options, even if the market goes down, you still make money).
Let’s take a simple example, you drink coffee at a coffee shop every weekday morning and pay R10 for a luxury cup of coffee.
At the end of the month, you’ve blown R200, not a lot of money, but take a look at these figures.
Let’s say you’ve rather invested that R200 (and bought a big pot of coffee to make your own) and managed to get 10% for the month, that R200 would have been R220 now. Next month you add another R200 and get 10% on both for the month.
Month1: R220.00
Month2: R462.00
Month3: R782.00
Month4: R1080.20
Month5: R1408.22
Month6: R1769.04
Month7: R2165.95
Month8: R2602.54
Month9: R3082.79
Month10: 3611.07
Month11: 4192.18
Month12: 4831.40
Which means your daily cup of coffee could’ve turned into almost R5000 in just a year on a very conservative 10% per month. How many other similar expenses do you have?
September 12th, 2009 at 12:55 am
@Re@per
Jan, I’ll be watching, but I need to point a few things out.
10% a month is a really optimistic figure. To earn a return like that you’ll have to take very big risks and, inevitably, you’ll loose out sometimes.
Futures and options are great to leverage and play with large amounts of money, using small amounts of cash, but they’re MUCH more volatile than shares and a lot more risky, especially futures.
In a futures contract you can potentially loose a lot more money than you paid for the futures contract. There are many people (and big institutions, like a few banks lately) that were financially ruined by futures contracts gone wrong.
This type of investing is not for the average Jack or Jane.
If you’re young (i.e. you have a lot of time to try again), are prepared to spend a lot of time learning, researching and planning, have a personality that can handle risk, have no debt and if you only use money you’re 100% prepared to loose (the giving up on your coffee example is a good one), then I’d say sure – go for it.
But for 95% of people I’d recommend to rather stick to more conservative investments.
September 12th, 2009 at 08:04 am
Hi Francois, you are correct, in normal trading conditions, 10% is very optimistic, but in a volatile market like the one we are in today, even 10% a week is possible if you’ve done your homework (I’ve been doing on average 30% a week on small amounts for the last 6 weeks just as an example) and reduce the risk of high risk trading. But stay away if the fear of losing money will keep you awake at night.
Futures are expensive, at R900 per contract and losing on average 5/6 times before hitting the jackpot, you need balls of steel and a solid statistical background to know what you’re doing, otherwise you’re going to wipe yourself in no time!
Using the normal stock market (JSE for example) and deriving the frequency of change of the specific stock (obviously you’ll need a live feed of data and trading on a daily basis), you get a good idea of whether it’s on it’s way up or on its way down; using trigonometric transforms, one can see the angle of change which is a good indication of the market going up or down; using some more math to see where the markets hit rock bottom and where the stock is being sold like pancakes at a flea market – all of this gives about a 70% chance of making massive gains in a volatile market and a 30% chance of losing small amounts (I say small since stop losses minimize your risk of losing a lot of money). Also, moving in and out of the market is expensive, that’s why I’ve decided to rather play with options than actually forking out a fortune on buying the stock itself.
Anyway, my blog is not called Investment Gambler for nothing :p
October 4th, 2009 at 04:22 pm
Where could I find who actualy are the top shareholders in SARB?
October 4th, 2009 at 08:33 pm
@Slawek
I’m not sure if the information is in the public domain, but I think the best bet is to request it from the SARB directly.
If you do obtain the info, please share it here.
May 5th, 2010 at 12:57 pm
The rabbit hole in R.S.A is much deeper than both of you realise. Think the SARB is privately owned? It is… and who knows who the shareholders are… but that’s just a false flag and pretty innocuous in the greater scheme of things. Just read the South African Reserve Bank Act. Section 21 deals with shareholders, its not a big secret and it is well documented.
But here is the kicker, ALL of the organs of state are corporations privately owned (will provide links at the bottom of this post) and foreign corporations:
1. Parliament of South Africa
2. Republic of South Africa
3. Government of the Republic of South Africa
4. etc.
They are corporations masquerading as our “country” and our “government”. R.S.A’s “head office” is in Washington DC. Parliament and R.S.A are registered in NY. The SIC code for R.S.A is 8888 which according to an insider refers to a “Royal Corporation”.
The purpose of the structures on the outset may seem “legitimate” however the true intention is to create debt via a system that has been made plausible via legislation (otherwise it would be fraud). Its a dog and pony show with the aim of enriching international cartels via sophisticated debt mechanism. In a nut shell what happens is these companies take out massive international loans via these Cartels (that create this “money” out of thin air) and then make the people of the land work like slaves to pay this loan off via the fiat legal tender that the company R.S.A has legislated. Infact we are slaves simply because we are too stupid to realise what money is and how it is created, like sheep we are unquestioning. One of the methods to generate these loans is to use organizations such as Eskom / Telkom / etc. to take out huge loans from the likes of the World Bank. The “Government” will take out loans as well as will SARB. Next the governments TAX the shit out of the people in order to re-pay these “loans”. This is how our energy leaves our communities never to return. Their police force (policy enforcement officers) are the stick they use to beat us into submission and the courts (another group of companies) is used to give us the false sense of security that there is justice. These guys (cartels) own the lot and like I said, its a dog and pony show conjuring up the illusion that all is free and democratic. Very far from the truth.
I have nothing against TAX as I want to give back to my community. If I could have it my way I would give 100% of my labour to my community (think about it – if we all did that we would want for nothing) anyway only a ‘tiny’ percentage of TAX is going to make it back to where it is intended, the rest leaves our communities never to be seen again under the guise of paying off fraudulent debts that suffer from compound interest “that where taken out in our best interests…”.
Think of it this way, if this international money was valuable we would swap Gold (which we have in abundance) for all the loans we require thus eliminating the need to pay of interest. And once we where done with the “money” we would simply buy back the Gold with that “money”. No interest re=payments required no energy loss for our society and our Gold reserves neatly back in place. But of course that would not benefit the few with their myopic views and narrow minded bigoted attitudes who would rather destroy this world for their own good than see the people prosper.
This is what I advocate people to do:
1. Stop paying income tax, the definition of the “republic” in the act limits its jurisdiction to the corporation (you do not live in a corporation do you?)
2. Stop using Fiat Debt based money. Trade barter exchange instead – this is why we use: http://www.free2xchange.com
3. Tell people about this fraud, make people aware that there is a better way of doing money it is possible and the benefits would uplift everyone in our communities in a profound way.
4. Opt out of Government, get your communities to start acting like communities and take care of its people, like we did in the old days. If you have left over help other communities. Fire the council or get them on board.
5. Sing and dance – we are free if we want to be.
6. Note – the name in your ID book / passport / Drivers license, is owned by R.S.A – that is why they can enforce company policy on you (since you mistakenly think the name is actually you). You have no obligation to play the role of the name. This is your most powerful defense to tyranny.
The above may seem harsh but I love this land, I love the people, and it hurts me daily when I see so much suffering and misery and hopelessness. Whats worse is that nothing is going to get better unless we start to educate people about Government / Law and Debt Money.
Finally – the above is given without prejudice, do your own research come up with your own conclusions.
—————————————————————-
Here are those links to the above corporations:
R.S.A: http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0000932419&owner=include&count=40
R.S.A – Government: http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?company=Government+of+the+Republic+of+South+Africa&match=&CIK=&filenum=&State=&Country=&SIC=&owner=exclude&Find=Find+Companies&action=getcompany
DnB: https://smallbusiness.dnb.com/ePlatform/servlet/IballValidationCmd?storeId=10001&catalogId=70001&busName=Republic+of+South+Africa&state=&country=US&cm_mmc=dnb*home*gws*lookup
SIC 8888 Other Royal Corporations: http://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&SIC=8888&owner=exclude&match=&start=0&count=40
June 12th, 2010 at 07:17 pm
If you like to know who is owns shares from the SARB, have a look her:
http://www.sarb.cc/index.php?/categories/1-Shareholder
I know what I’m talking about, I’m one of this foreign shareholders. It has nothing to do with the U.S. or the worldbank!
@Brendan this is nonsens!
June 13th, 2010 at 11:01 pm
The shareholders are indeed irrelevant. Who owns the SARB is clearly outlined in the various banking acts. Follow how the debt is created and the legal infrastructure that makes this debt possible.
The sooner people wake up and start exiting this horrendous system the better.
Here is some more info: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2550156453790090544#
June 14th, 2010 at 12:04 am
@brendan I agree with the debt! I do not agree with the SARB! If Michael Duerr and some “associated” shareholders around him haven’t started the discussions about the governance, nothing happened.
Some facts – SA is dominated by 4 banks! ABSA is the government bank controlled by the Brits! The lifeboats arranged by the SARB for ABSA was bigger then 5 Billion Rand! They got the money about 12 years ago! No penny is turned back, no interest is paid! Who was in charge at this time, Deputy Governor of the SARB was Gill Marcus, later CEO of ABSA and today Governor of the SARB. People like Marcus, Mboweni, Stals, Gordhan, Manuel and Ramos blunder this country! Why is it necessary to ship more then 40 tons of Gold to London? Who arranged it – SARB and ABSA! When? Some month ago!
Yes, change the system! Get the SARB under a strong control, NOOOO not the gangsters from the ANC and/or the government! Use the shareholders, a listed SARB! Change the way how credits are given to the people. Only the SARB should deal in credits. The bank should only be an agent! All the interest goes back to the nation! It’s time that all this lifeboats should be paid back, all the kickbacks have to paid back
WAKE UP SOUTH AFRICA IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER CHANGE!
June 14th, 2010 at 07:37 am
@brendan
I enjoyed that video. It explains fractional reserve lending well and it’s not overly focused on pushing some agenda.
@Milan
The way I see it, even though the SARB is owned by shareholders, currently those shareholders don’t have any say in the decisions or governance of the SARB.
Which essentially means the owners of the SARB are nothing but a nice thought, since they don’t have any power.
But there is also a problem with giving shareholders power, because those shareholders have their own motives and agendas.
I’ll take myself as an example.
I own shares in three of the major commercial banks in South Africa. I own shares in those banks because I want to make money.
Lately there has been a huge fuss made about the high bank charges those commercial banks charge their clients.
Now I can see how it would be better for South Africa as a whole if bank charges were lower, and how most people will benefit from lower bank charges.
But quite frankly, because I’m a shareholder, I don’t care. In fact, I like it. I want the banks to make as much money from bank charges as they possibly can, because the more money they make, the better my investments will do.
And the same problem goes for shareholdership in the SARB. There is a conflict of interest.
What I’d like to see most is that the SARB’s primary purpose is to serve the best interests of South Africa.
The problem comes in if the shareholders’ motive, which is almost certainly to make money, is in conflict with that primary purpose.
That problem is even worse if the SARB’s shareholders are not South African citizens. What do they care about South Africa?
So Milan, my question to you is:
How would making the SARB a publicly listed company, where shareholders have the same rights as with other publicly listed companies, make it more likely to serve the best interests of South Africa?
June 14th, 2010 at 10:01 am
If control over SARB is in the hand of shareholders it, in few years, will be controlled by a handful of family houses which already manipulate and control the world.
It is niggling that most of the people of the world do not see that “globalisation” is nothing else then different tag for Zionizm=control of the world by few.
Please, do not confuse Zionism with the Jews. Not all zionists are Jew and not all Jews are zionist.
June 14th, 2010 at 11:21 am
@Francis / Milan
It is a good video and a relatively quick crash course. Some people have commented in the past that the gold vs money creation ratio is some form of false flag. Whether this is true or not is in my opinion irrelevant. The issue for me is the unsustainable nature of our financial systems and the direct impact it has on our environment. The unsustainable nature is expressed in the “debt monster” in the video… when you realise that this can never be paid off in current financial paradigms you will start to change how you view banks, governments and other institutions that advocate these practices.
You have raised a good point, you have a vested interest in this system as do many other people. For global societies to move to a different paradigm would be like a drug addict being forced to go cold turkey. It will be turbulent to say the least. However this turbulence does expose a second issue in the solution that inevitably will be offered as a resolution to financial system collapses. Whether the solution will be in the best interests of the people is really up to each one of us. I have a good idea of what is going to be proposed and can’t say I like it very much as it does nothing to serve the people on this earth fairly and equitably.
In my opinion, the best way to serve the majoprity of people living on the land known as south africa is to introduce a “green currency” (something we have been working on). The idea is to create money as and when it is needed and by the people who need it. It works backwards to how current money systems work where money appears to flow from bank volts to you… in this system the “money” or value flows from the people back to the vaults where it is accounted…
August 30th, 2010 at 03:46 pm
The currency issue is not up for debate. There will be a one world currency where all monies are kept in control and without the mark 666 there will be no buying or selling. This will be fulfilled irrespective of any noble suggestions or solutions provided for alternate methods of money management/transaction management. The SARB with the owners, and Im talking about those who do not appear on the register before the 10000 cap was introduced, are in on this, with the world banksters and other centralised banks of the globe.
August 30th, 2010 at 04:24 pm
Firstly the owners of the SARB make no difference and that if anything and as I have mentioned before is a distraction. Regardless of who the owners are the SARB fits into a system which drives it out of the control of the owners. What the owners control is within the framework of its scope which makes no difference in the greater scheme of things.
The following companies fit together in a nice little chain:
World Bank ->
IMF ->
SARB ->
RSA ->
ENTER NAME OF CITIZEN HERE ->
Human Battery
The Human Battery is what makes it all possible and without its consent, the chain above it falls apart.
Many of us have learn how to deal with the “beast” and it is quite well behaved when the Human Battery tells it that it is not a company or CITIZEN.
Without the battery, nothing can work in the current status quo so to say that no buying and selling will be allowed without the mark… is missing the point. Who says we will be buying and selling? We can give freely and we can take freely… no buying or selling necessary.
I no longer exist in the grid and loving every second of it… no forms to fill in, no one chasing me for anything. AND I get to give back to my community 100%.
September 1st, 2010 at 05:12 pm
Awesome….Jesus Christ is the light!!!…we are true to accept whether or not we accept the mark….here is wisdom. Let |He who hath understanding….