Cobus Stofberg, a veteran of television broadcasting and media in South Africa – and a member of the founding team of M-Net and MultiChoice Group – is stepping down from the boards of Naspers and its European-listed subsidiary, Prosus.
Stofberg served as financial manager, chief operating officer and CEO of various companies within the Naspers stable from 1985 to 2011 and was at the forefront of the group’s expansion internationally, Naspers said in a statement to investors on Wednesday.
Naspers is the former owner of both M-Net, founded in 1985, and MultiChoice, which houses DStv, the digital satellite business that was launched 10 years later.
He served as a director of Naspers from October 2013 and as a director of Prosus, the Amsterdam-listed technology investor controlled by Naspers, from August 2019.
In the statement, Naspers and Prosus chairman Koos Bekker said: “Cobus was absolutely pivotal to the development of our group. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.”
Stofberg began his career as a chartered accountant and partner at Coopers & Lybrand (now PwC), before venturing into media.
From 1997 to 2011, he led the pay-television group for Naspers, steering expansion during the golden years of satellite television and subscriber growth. He built fabulous personal wealth over his career and is today a billionaire in rand terms — this as the Naspers share price boomed on the back of its highly successful early backing of China’s Tencent Holdings.
Read: Naspers shifts to an AI-first strategy – and it’s paying off
He led MIH Holdings, the parent company for Naspers’s broadcasting assets and later its international investments, between 1997 and 2011. During this time, he helped steer DStv’s expansion across Africa and its transformational investment in Tencent, which became one of the most successful venture bets in global business history. – © 2025 NewsCentral Media
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