> ## 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 — Thursday, 17 September 2026 - URL: https://www.businessbagel.com/the-roundup-thursday-17-september-2026/ - Published: 2026-09-17T04:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-17T03:59:59.000Z - Author: Christian Maidman Today’s edition Banking Wars Good morning. Discovery has a bank, Old Mutual has a bank, and the company that owns PEP is building one. MTN is thinking about it, Sanlam starts in November, and the motivations behind all these moves vary. SpaceX, meanwhile, has flown Starship 13 times without reaching orbit or earning a cent, and next Tuesday it goes for both. One is waiting on a regulator, the other on a rocket. Let’s get into it. --- MARKETS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/markets--44-.png) --- LICENCE TO BILL ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/6-7.png) ## Why does every big South African company suddenly want to be a bank? Discovery has run its own bank for 7 years. Old Mutual launched one last year. Pepkor, which owns PEP and Ackermans, is building PlusB, while Sanlam starts selling banking products in November and MTN is considering banking licences of its own. Suddenly, some of South Africa’s biggest companies want a piece of banking. But this isn’t necessarily about becoming the next Standard Bank. A banking licence can make lending cheaper, bring new customers into the wider business and give companies a much better picture of how those customers earn and spend their money. For businesses that already have millions of customers, banking can become another layer underneath everything they already sell **Who is building what:** - **Discovery Bank:** about 1.6 million clients seven years in, more than 1,500 joining a day, and R370 million of profit in the year to June. - **OM Bank:** 742,000 customers and R1.4 billion on deposit by the end of June, against a target of R10 billion by 2028. - **Pepkor’s PlusB:** Costing under R1 billion to build and due in the second half of its 2027 financial year, with a target of R8 billion in deposits. - **Sanlam:** Rather than getting its own licence, it will start selling GoTyme banking products through its existing channels in November. Getting your own banking licence still means putting up at least R250 million in capital, so becoming a bank isn’t cheap. But the logic is increasingly attractive: if you already have millions of customers, banking gives you more ways to acquire them, understand them, lend to them and sell to them. That’s why the next generation of South African banks may increasingly come from companies that didn’t start as banks at all. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/why-south-african-companies-are-launching-banks/) --- EARNING ITS KEEP ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/5-4.png) ## Starship has flown for three years without earning a cent, and that changes on Tuesday 22 September At 14:15 on Tuesday 22 September, South African time, SpaceX will light Starship at Starbase in south Texas and try to put its upper stage into orbit. It is the rocket’s fourteenth flight. The window runs 75 minutes, and the vehicle stands 124 metres with a 52-metre upper stage on top. Inside it are 26 third-generation Starlink satellites, the first of their kind to fly. Thirteen flights in, Starship has still never been to orbit. Every one of them, going back to its debut in April 2023, was suborbital, and not one earned the launch division a cent. The satellites change that. They are the first V3 craft to join a constellation already more than 11,000 strong, and SpaceX listed in June in the largest stock market debut on record, with the launch rate it promised investors resting on Starship flying reliably and being reused fast. Nothing gets caught by the tower this time. The upper stage circles the Earth six times, then comes down in the Pacific west of Chile. [**Read the full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/spacex-starship-flight-14-first-orbit-starlink-v3/) --- BAGEL BITE **What is the most abundant gas in Earth's atmosphere?** **A.** Oxygen **B.** Nitrogen **C.** Carbon dioxide --- DOING THE ROUNDS ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/3-3.png) **Warmbaths has been carrying South African families through school holidays for decades, and the company behind it has just been sold.** Forever Resorts, which operates 16 resorts and lodges, has been bought by Benus Trade and Invest. Benus is associated with Community Investment Holdings, a South African group turning over more than R20 billion a year, with interests including Medscheme. The Competition Tribunal approved the deal without conditions on 25 August, weeks before it was announced publicly. The resorts will keep the Forever name. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/forever-resorts-benus-warmbaths-acquisition/) **The warehouses that keep PEP and Ackermans stocked have a new majority owner, and it is not a retailer.** Pepkor has sold control of three distribution centres to IronOak, a new industrial property platform built by YW Capital and RMB, in a R2.25 billion deal that completed on 8 September. About R2 billion reaches Pepkor, which keeps a minority stake and rents the buildings back for 15 years, so nothing changes on the shop floor. IronOak says Pepkor is only the first, and it is hunting other warehouse owners. [**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/pepkor-badger-properties-ironoak-sale-leaseback/) **L’Oréal has overtaken LVMH to become France’s most valuable listed company.** The beauty giant ended Tuesday worth about €203 billion, while the owner of Louis Vuitton also dropped out of Europe’s 10 biggest listed companies for the first time since 2017\. The problem is that shoppers are pulling back from luxury. LVMH shares have lost more than a third of their value this year and more than half since their 2023 peak, as years of rising prices begin to bite. Bain estimates that around 60 million customers have stopped buying luxury goods altogether.[**Full story →**](https://www.businessbagel.com/loreal-overtakes-lvmh-europe-top-ten-luxury/) --- WEATHER ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/weather--40-.png) --- BAGEL GAMES ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/97/24/9724ffa3-48e9-48a7-a5f7-e38b7d2c9b36/content/images/2026/09/Wordle--44-.png) Have you got what it takes to win today’s Wordle? [**Play here →**](https://puzzel.org/en/wordle/play?p=-P1eeQikFBywnOI9jc5Z&ref=businessbagel.com) --- THE ANSWER As for the Bagel Bite, the answer is: **B.** **Nitrogen** Although we breathe air mainly for its oxygen, oxygen is only about 21 percent of the atmosphere, while nitrogen dominates at roughly 78 percent. Nitrogen is quite unreactive, so it largely stays in the air rather than being used up. Plants cannot take it straight from the air and rely on soil bacteria to convert it into a usable form. This process is essential for growing the food we eat. --- That’s your Thursday done. Enjoyed it? Forward it on, a friend can subscribe in a click. Written by the Business Bagel crew.