Edward Hill-Wood has joined Naspers, a South African group that transformed itself through an investment in Tencent 16 years ago, as the firm’s new Hong Kong-based IR director.
Hill-Wood, a graduate of the University of Bristol and Université de Savoie as well as a former Eton College student, moves to Naspers after 13 years at Morgan Stanley where he covered internet and technology, including Naspers. Prior to that, he worked as an analyst at Citi and ABN AMRO.
Founded in 1915, Naspers describes itself as ‘a global internet and entertainment group’ but is also one of the largest technology investors in the world, operating in more than 130 countries and markets. The firm spent $34 mn on a 46.5 percent stake in Tencent ‘when it was just a start-up providing instant messaging services,’ according to a 2015 article in the Financial Times.
That investment helped ‘transform Naspers from an ageing local print business into Africa’s biggest media company,’ it reads. As a result, the performance of the firm has become inextricably tied to that of Tencent, despite Naspers’ hugely diverse portfolio.
