OBITUARY | Markus Jooste: The man who orchestrated South ...

Former chief executive of Steinhoff, Markus Jooste who died on Thursday.(Getty Images).

Markus Jooste's death at this moment, when South African authorities have finally issued an arrest warrant against him, will come as a disappointment to those who have seen their own lives, families and livelihoods destroyed by the corporate collapse of Steinhoff, writes James-Brent Styan.

Markus Jooste, who died on Thursday, aged 63, was a self-made billionaire who worked himself up from nothing.

By all accounts, he was a brilliant man, with his roots in Pretoria, where he worked at the Receiver of Revenue for years. He became the financial director at a small furniture factory in Ga-Rankuwa, called Gomma-Gomma. This was where his path crossed with that of a German retailer, called Bruno Steinhoff, a man who had come to South Africa post-1994 to invest in a country in which he saw tremendous potential.

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