BizNews Radio

Tonight’s BizNews Briefing starts with Deputy Finance Minister David Masondo saying South Africa’s public finances have reached a turning point, with debt stabilising and the deficit narrowing. Alec Hogg then reports from Parliament on bracket relief, a revenue surprise and improved “housekeeping” at Treasury. The programme shifts to the US for President Trump’s economy-focused State of the Union, before closing with JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warning that parts of the lending market are heating up again.

In today’s BN Daybreak, we open with Bloomberg News Now on President Trump’s first State of the Union of his second term — delivered just days after the Supreme Court overturned his emergency tariffs — as the White House sharpens its economic message ahead of the year’s political battles. We then shift to the streaming wars, where Warner Bros. Discovery weighs a revised Paramount/Skydance offer — a $31-a-share cash bid — against its existing Netflix deal, with fresh negotiations now back on the table.

From there it’s all about Big Tech and the AI buildout: Meta is set to commit billions to AMD chips and AI systems over the next five years, underscoring the scale of the infrastructure race. In banking, JPMorgan boss Jamie Dimon warns he’s seeing echoes of the pre-2008 rush for risky lending, calling out rivals for doing “dumb things”.

Back in South Africa, energy expert Thomas Garner unpacks Eskom’s warning that load-shedding could return in 2029 — and the political tug-of-war over an independent National Transmission Company. We close with economist Dawie Roodt’s Budget preview: a possible revenue overrun, the temptation to spend windfalls, and what government should prioritise instead.

Tonight’s BizNews Briefing spans energy, markets and policy. Thomas Garner explains why Eskom warns load-shedding could return in 2029 and what needs to change to prevent it. A SENS round-up then tracks improving property momentum, Aveng’s return to profit, Super Group’s resilience and a sharp drop in liquidations data. Bloomberg’s Nassim Taleb warns that today’s AI leaders may not remain tomorrow’s winners, before Dawie Roodt previews Wednesday’s Budget — with the revenue overrun the key swing factor.

In today’s BizNews Premium Editor’s Desk, Alec Hogg looks behind the curtain ahead of Budget lock-up — why South Africa’s state has become too big, what a shrinking GDP-per-capita scoreboard signals, and what to watch for in the Minister’s numbers. He also flags a sobering Financial Times read on Donald Trump’s Iran dilemma and the rising risk of conflict, and ends with a practical Economist explainer on HRV — the wearable metric that may be the best indicator of overall health.

In this interview with BizNews, energy expert Thomas Garner looks at the reasons behind the warning in ESKOM's Medium Term Adequacy Report that loadshedding could return in 2029. He describes the various challenges ESKOM would have to overcome to prevent that, and shares what is possible to achieve in new grid capacity with different technologies: coal, nuclear, gas, solar and wind. He stresses that the challenges are “systemic and it comes a long way” and is also as a result of “the monopolistic nature of the animal ESKOM”. Commenting on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s SONA statement that the National Transmission Company will be independent being contrary to what ESKOM and the Minister of Electricity had wanted, he says: “There’s different factions within ESKOM. There’s the faction that wants to see privatisation, a market, and full unbundling and then there's a faction that doesn't want to see it and wants to see the monopoly stay intact as it has been for the last hundred years. So it depends who's the management and it depends who's allowed to have the loudest voice.”