Gold Fields pursues $27bn Northern Star deal and US influence wanes, China & EMs rise

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And now, The Money Show with Stephen Grootes, live on 92.7 and 106 FM, streaming on the Prime Media Plus app and DSTV channel 856

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The Money Show with Stephen Grootes is brought to you by Absa Corporates and Investment Banking, connecting global finance to the future. That's how Absa's invested in your story. Eight minutes after six, good evening, welcome to the programme, I'm Stephen Grootes.

Quite a busy sort of day on since the Stock Exchange News Service early this morning. Quite a few announcements. Some of them are absolutely fascinating. Some of them maybe will be very interesting in times to come. I mean, the big story really, Gold Fields, wanting to buy Northern Star Resources. It's an Australian gold miner. They have operations in one particular part of Australia. All sorts of options are open for Gold Fields there. The Board of Northern Star Resources says no. We'll talk to David McKay about that in a moment. He's the editor at MiningMX. News also about spectrum and your cell phone. In other words, how much spectrum, so radio frequency essentially, does your cell phone provider actually have to provide you with 5G or 4G or whatever it is where you are? A big chunk of that now being freed up because of a different policy decision being taken by the communications minister, Soli Malazi, will speak to Numbi Sorbati, the CEO of the Association of Combs and Technology, representing some of the private sector operators in that sector. I think they will probably be quite pleased to let them speak for themselves and just hear their version on that obviously in a couple of moments. Lots of conversations, there's been the big China-U.S. summit in the US.

Lots of conversations in the wake of that about who's more powerful. And if you look at the trajectories, the big question really is a sort of unstoppable now that the US will, I suppose, continue to decline and on the face of it, China will continue to grow. That seems to be the sense, and in particular, that seems to have been accelerated by the war in Iran or the war on Iran, if you like, by the US. We'll talk about that with Philip Saunders, the Director of the Investment Institute at Ninety One. And then AI, lots of concern about AI models that break out of sandboxes, that basically get into the internet and try and wreak havoc when they do.

Arthur Goldstock's been looking at that, but NVIDIA is saying they will have a new open agent safety platform. But NVIDIA is the company that benefits the most from AI and the development of AI, and so obviously they want this. I'm not convinced it's such a good idea. It seems to me it's a bit like instead of having all of your criminals in different prisons around the country and dealing with each one if there's a problem, you're putting all of the supervillains in one prison, and then if you have one problem in that one prison, they all escape. I mean, I don't know how else to put it, but in superhero terms, and that for me is a big concern. We'll speak to Arthur Goldstock about that. Good to have you along tonight. The Money Show, double one, double A, three oh seven oh two, oh two one, four four six oh five six seven, it's eleven after six.

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The Money Show.

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With Stephen Grootes, live on 92.7 and 106 FM. Streaming on the Prime Media Plus app.

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And DSTV, channel eight five six.

Stephen Grootes (3:16)

Well, news today that Clicks is now bought the majority stake in ARC. It's a beauty company, a beauty retailer. They have ten big stores. I think one of them's in Sandton City, one of the biggest beauty stores in the country. They spent quite a lot of money, actually, on it. And what I was going to, what I want to ask is, what is the most you've ever spent in one outing on beauty? If you do a Saturday shop to Clicks or Diskem or ARC or whoever it is, Willworths or whoever, TrueWorths, whichever, for Sheenie. And what's the most you've ever spent on beauty? Could be scent, could be makeup, could be some treatment, whatever it is.

Skin peel or something, I have no idea. I will share with you my secret. I once spent one and a half thousand rand on a particular Jimmy Choo product. Before you get too excited, it was a scent, okay? Was for me, but it was a scent. Wasn't anything else but Jimmy Choo. What, for you, is the most you've ever spent? Don't have to give me your real name if you don't want to.