BN Daybreak - Tue 23 June 2026: Naspers earnings; Roubini turns bullish; Keir Starmer resigns; SA drug cartel warnings

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Daybreak on BizNews is proudly brought to you by Bonitis, the medical aid for South Africa.

**Kerry Lanigan** (0:14)
Good morning and welcome to the BizNews Daybreak. Today is Tuesday the 23rd of June. I'm Kerry Lanigan.
Let's start with the latest overnight world news from our partners at Bloomberg.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:26)
Iran is being allowed to sell crude oil on the global market under a 60-day license issued by the US. Now this move is the result of talks in Switzerland as the two sides work toward a permanent peace deal. Today, Vice President JD Vance described the first round of negotiations as very, very good. And he said Iran agreed to allow nuclear inspectors back into the country. Here is Vance speaking to reporters.

**JD Vance** (0:52)
Whether good faith or bad faith, you can't trust anybody's words. You have to trust what they actually do. Letting in the inspectors is a big deal, but again, we're going to see what they actually let the inspectors do once they're in the country. That's going to continually be part of our negotiation. So my point is not that I trust or distrust anybody. My point is that I trust action.

**SPEAKER_3** (1:10)
Now the claim made by Vance was later echoed by President Trump. However, Iranian officials say Vance's assertion was and does not reflect reality. Over the weekend, the US and Iran agreed to establish a high-level committee to oversee these talks, as well as working groups dealing with nuclear issues and sanctions. There will also be an established communication line to avoid incidents related to maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.
It was a mixed day for the equity market. We had mega-cap tech shares retreating. Alphabet was down 5% after another high-profile AI leader departed for a rival. We had the S&P 500 dropping 0.4% of 1%.
The NASDAQ Composite was down 1.3% today. And we got reaction from Thomas Martin, Senior Portfolio Manager at Global Alt Investments.

**Thomas Martin** (2:00)
Whether it's the microchips or the memory or the energy or the electricians, et cetera, that go into this.
And they're kind of booked out for the next one, two, maybe even three years to the end of this decade. So, you know, there is a worry that at some point that supply is reached and perhaps, you know, it's over-invested in.

**SPEAKER_3** (2:24)
Shares in SpaceX were down 16% today in the wake of the company's sale of investment-grade bonds. The company is raising at least $20 billion to refinance a bridge loan and fund its AI operations. Separately, SpaceX inked a multi-billion-dollar agreement to provide computing resources to the startup Reflection AI.
Qualcomm is said to be in advance talks to acquire the AI chip startup Modular. We are told a proposed transaction would be valued at about $4 billion. A deal could be announced in the coming weeks, although these talks could still end without one.
In the UK, Keir Starmer said he would step down as Prime Minister. This paves the way for Andy Burnham to become the country's seventh PM in a decade. Last week, Burnham won a special election in Makerfield, that's near Manchester. Today he was sworn in as a member of Parliament. At the same time, Starmer announced his resignation.

**Keir Starmer** (3:22)
The question my party is asking now is whether I am best placed to lead us into the next general election. I have heard the answer of my parliamentary party to that question, and I accept that answer with good grace.

**SPEAKER_3** (3:43)
Starmer laid out a timeline for his departure, and it could see Burnham installed as Prime Minister as soon as July 17th if no other challenger surfaces.

**Kerry Lanigan** (3:52)
Following the one billion rand drug bust at Batebridge, there are renewed calls to take seriously General Mkhunazi's warning that South Africa risks becoming another Mexico.
Willem Ulst of the Institute for Security Studies joins Christine to unpack the ISS's latest drug study, and what it will actually take to turn the tide. The full interview is on biznews.com.

**Willem Ulst** (4:15)
I think we are here today because of what happened about almost a year ago on the 6th of July, when he had that infamous and that really, that groundbreaking interview where he came up over the allegations and the center of those allegations were that the drug cartels that are actually taking over the police government and that they are having their way and of course, we saw at our committee, we saw what is going on in the Mdlundu Commission. At the moment, it revealed a lot, it shocked really, it shook the nation.
I don't think the revelations that came out there is complete. I think it's maybe the years of the EPOF and we will have to look at it further. That prompted us to look at, in the past two years, we had various Kandisline laboratories that were discovered. I mean, the one at Robesdal, almost two billion rand with the precursors and so on. Then we saw the one in Stannerton, we saw the latest one near Rosenberg. What happened there is what we didn't experience previously, was the presence of the cooks. Now, the cooks, as I referred to them, are your Mexican cartels that are sending their chemists here to come and mix and prepare the drugs. That is mainly your methamphetamines, your tic.