Naspers, Africa’s most valuable company is likely to create Europe’s biggest internet company.

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Naspers is a global internet group and one of the largest technology investors in the world. The media and television subscription group headquartered in South Africa offers in services in over 130 countries.

Bob Van Dijik has been invested in an unusual CEO battle – shrinking the gap between Naspers’ own market value and it’s $133 Billion stake in Tencent Holdings Ltd, a wildly successful investment it made in the Chinese internet company in 2011. Now Bob thinks by carving out its international internet businesses, including the 31 percent holding in the Chinese tech giant, for a listing on Euronext Amsterdam, the company will tap into a bigger pool of capital and shrink a discount that’s been worsened by Naspers’ outsize presence on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. Few days after unbundling its television subscription company, MultiChoice Group, Naspers will now form a NewCo which is likely to be the largest consumer internet business in Europe and the third-largest company on the Amsterdam exchange, Van Dijk said in a phone interview with Bloomberg, noting that he expects to attract 2 billion euros ($2.26 billion) of investment just from index funds.

Naspers’ muddle is similar to those faced by other companies that made hugely successful investments in technology startups which eventually overgrew their operating businesses, such as Yahoo! Inc. and SoftBank Group Corp. made on Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. But while it has pursued international internet investments, seemingly in a bid to replicate its success with Tencent, the company has also been keen to stress its continued interest in making internet bets closer to home with plans to invest $314 million in tech businesses in South Africa over the next three years.

Richard Ogundiya

Journalist & Techpreneur. Africa, communications and data.

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