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Through a single asset manager, the South African government has become the dominant shareholder across the formal economy. The Public Investment Corporation (PIC) is a state-owned company that invests the pension savings of government workers. It is the largest or second-largest shareholder in most of the country's biggest listed companies, among them its banks, telecoms operators, miners, and retailers, giving the state influence in many of the country’s big businesses.

The PIC is Africa's largest asset manager, with more than R3 trillion under management. It is also one of the largest public pension fund managers globally.

Listed equities are the PIC's largest asset class.

The companies below are among South Africa's largest. In nearly all of them, the PIC is the largest or second-largest shareholder.

The PIC carries a dual mandate: to grow its clients' money and, at the same time, to advance the developmental and transformation objectives set by the state.

As the dominant or controlling shareholder across the country's banks, telecommunications networks, mining houses, and retailers, it has the potential pull to influence board decisions and policy – and could do this in areas ranging from racial and gender transformation to climate policy and commercial strategy.

However, that is only one perspective on the potential power balance that flows from the PIC ownership dominance of so many large companies. The other side of the balance, and the more interesting one, is the sway those shareholdings afford corporate actors over the government and its polices. Were the government to force foolish or ideologically driven mandates onto the corporates, the effect would be to undermine their growth and profitability and thereby directly undercut the assets invested by the state on behalf of its employees. In turn the political effects of this would be damaging.

The PIC and its role in South African business may counterintuitively be a useful conduit for some measure of pragmatism and sense to enter the government and the Cabinet – in as far that ever occurs.