The newswires have been quiet since the March 2010 announcement that Momentum and Metropolitan would merge. But earlier this week, on 26 August 2010, the groups announced that they had reached agreement on the final terms of their deal. MMI Holdings will become South Africa’s third largest listed insurer with an embedded value of some R30 billion. Only Old Mutual (market capitalisation of some R80.393 billion) and Sanlam (R48.279 billion) are larger. The “new” top five is rounded off by Discovery and Liberty Holdings, which box in the R20 billion (and up) weight division.

I wasn’t around in 1965. I’ve trawled the Internet and reliably learned it was slap bang in the middle of the decade when Mary Quant designed the Mini Skirt, the “Sound of Music” was released and The Grateful Dead played their first (of many) concerts. It was also the last time South Africa’s infrastructure was as stretched as today. Fast forward to 2010 and you’ll find a country groaning under the strain of providing services to 50 million people. At a Rode & Associates property conference held in Johannesburg recently, Henk Langenhoven, economist at SAFCEC, said South Africa had some way to go before it could trade blows with its heavyweight economic peers.