> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.businessbagel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # The Roundup — Monday, 28 September 2026 - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-monday-28-september-2026/ - Published: 2026-09-28T04:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-28T03:59:59.000Z - Author: Christian Maidman Today’s edition Senior Momentum Good morning, and welcome to your Monday Roundup. One of South Africa’s biggest financial groups is pushing retirement out by 3 years, while one of the world’s biggest carmakers is trying to find a way to operate with 50,000 fewer people. Some companies want you around for longer, and some do not. Let's get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--50-.png) --- WORKING LATE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article--momentum-retire-1.png) ## Momentum has just pushed retirement back to 63 for its staff, and it is following the big banks If you work at one of South Africa’s big financial groups, 60 is no longer the finish line. The latest to move it is Momentum, which has taken the retirement age for all its employees from 60 to 63, while some of its sales staff can now stay until 65. There is a good reason companies are reconsidering 60\. Standard Bank’s old limit for executives was reported to have counted against it when it tried to keep respected banker Kenny Fihla, who eventually left to run Absa. Standard Bank then raised the limit, saying people are staying healthy, energetic and engaged for much longer. **But there is a trade-off:** - For companies and their shareholders, keeping their best people around for another few productive years can make plenty of sense. - But every boss who stays another 3 years is sitting in a chair somebody else was waiting for, potentially leaving everyone below them waiting longer for their turn. - Italy accidentally tested this in 2011\. After a pension reform forced many people to work longer, economists found that in companies with little room to grow, each extra year a manager stayed cut the number of younger employees promoted to manager by nearly 50%. Standard Bank’s CEO Sim Tshabalala and CFO Arno Daehnke are passing on their own extra years. Business Times reported that they considered whether staying longer could make them a stumbling block for the next crop of leaders. So the extra years can buy companies experience at the top, while the people below may end up paying for them in patience. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/momentum-retirement-age-63-banks/) --- STEERING COMMITTEE ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article--Volkswagen-1.png) ## Volkswagen’s biggest recall since Dieselgate has landed in the middle of the biggest shake-up in its history The repair is the easy - rather, easier - bit. Volkswagen is calling back about 4 million VW, Audi, Skoda and Seat cars over a screw in the steering that can corrode, its biggest recall since Dieselgate, and it says each fix takes an hour at most. Germany’s road traffic authority says it knows of no incidents involving damage or injury. The recall landed on the day VW’s board met to work through a much longer job: a plan to size the group for the cars it can actually sell. That means building fewer of them. Tariffs have cost VW billions of euros in the US, well over 100 new competitors have turned up in China, and demand for electric cars has been patchy. So the plan takes out factory capacity for 500,000 cars a year in China and the same again in Europe, with about 50,000 more jobs going on top of cuts already agreed. VW says it cannot guarantee work for four German plants from as early as 2031, and closing them would be its first shutdown of full-scale factories at home. In Kariega, where VW builds the Polo for Europe and employs more than 3,500 people, there is no indication yet of what the plan means. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/volkswagen-recall-4-million-cars-turnaround-plan/) --- BAGEL BITE **Who was the first person to win two Nobel Prizes?** **A.** Marie Curie **B.** Rosalind Franklin **C.** Ada Lovelace --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Article-Airports-Company-South-Africa-1.png) **Airports Company South Africa has gone back to the man who managed its money through Covid, this time as its boss.** Siphamandla Mthethwa, finance chief from 2020 to 2023, takes over on 1 November. He has raised money for it before, leading a R6 billion funding programme that included a bond with no government guarantee. Board chair Irvin Phenyane has now put spending on his to-do list: a R15 billion upgrade plan from 2027 that could grow to R37 billion by 2031, from runways to luggage scanners.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/acsa-siphamandla-mthethwa-ceo-airport-upgrades/) **The owner of Ouma rusks and Selati sugar is a step closer to owning Husky, Pamper, Beeno and Bob Martin.** The Competition Commission has recommended that the Competition Tribunal approve RCL Foods’ R695 million purchase of Martin & Martin, with conditions. RCL mostly makes dry pet food, and the deal takes it into wet food, treats and pet care, where it has barely been. In return, it must keep the factories running and cut no jobs for a set period. The Tribunal still has the final say.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/rcl-foods-husky-pamper-bob-martin-deal-conditions/) **South Africa leans more and more on imported fuel, and the going rate to ship crude has just hit a record.** A giant tanker on the Gulf-to-China run now costs more than $1 million a day to hire, after attacks around the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea upended the usual routes. Freight is now about a fifth of the cost of getting crude to a refinery. Shipping is built into South Africa’s monthly fuel price, so it lands on the pump even when oil does not move.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/tanker-rates-record-south-africa-fuel-price-shipping/) **Some pictures people uploaded to ChatGPT ended up on image-hosting sites, behind unlisted links, and no human put them there.** Its own AI agents did, 53 times, before the company tightened its safeguards. Most are down, OpenAI says, but it cannot tell the owners: it strips account details from training data and has no way to match the pictures back. It is one of more than 15 disclosed incidents since the agents broke into the AI platform Hugging Face in July, and OpenAI says its review will take months.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/openai-agents-posted-53-user-images/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--46-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--50-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P2Y6Q-6EBIxZa1OIv5p&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **A. Marie Curie** She took the physics prize in 1903 for her work on radioactivity, then the chemistry prize in 1911 for discovering the elements polonium and radium. No one before her had ever won two Nobel Prizes, and her feat across two sciences has never been repeated. She helped coin the word radioactivity itself. Her research reshaped both physics and medicine. --- That’s your Monday sorted. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.