Johnny Copelyn

John Anthony Copelyn (born 1949 or 1950) is a South African businessman and former trade unionist who has been a chief executive officer of Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) since 1997. He entered the company as the head of the investment wing of the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU), where he was formerly general secretary.

Copelyn's union career began during apartheid at the National Union of Textile Workers, later merged into SACTWU. While running SACTWU's investment wing in the mid-1990s, he represented the African National Congress in the National Assembly during the first post-apartheid Parliament in 1994. He resigned from his parliamentary seat in 1997 to take over HCI, henceforth running it as a private-equity holding company, with his erstwhile business partner, fellow former unionist Marcel Golding. As of 2022, Copelyn's personal stake in HCI was worth nearly R1 billion.

Early life and union career Copelyn was born in 1949 or 1950. He is descended from Lithuanian Jews and joined Habonim as a teenager. He attended the University of the Witwatersrand, completing a Bachelor of Arts in 1973; his unpublished honours thesis on the Pondoland revolt, completed the following year, is still widely cited in academia. After finishing university, Copelyn moved to Durban in 1974, shortly after the 1973 Durban strikes, to join the trade union movement; his first job was as editor of the newly launched South African Labour Bulletin. He served in the seat until 1997. During the same period, he was chief executive officer of the SACTWU investment company, the union's investment wing, and acted as an investment advisor to COSATU. In this capacity he struck up a partnership with his friend and counterpart in the National Union of Mineworkers's investment wing, Marcel Golding.

Hosken Consolidated Investments: 1997–present Copelyn and Golding resigned from Parliament in 1997 to run Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI), a holding company headquartered in Cape Town and publicly listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). They obtained a controlling stake in HCI by reversing a number of the unions' investment companies' assets. Copelyn also serviced as chief executive officer at Johnnic.

Union investment model The model of union investment pioneered by Copelyn and Golding through HCI was controversial among leftists and in some accounts promoted the rise of "business unionism". Copelyn continued to run the SACTWU investment company, the major shareholder in HCI; the investment company grew from start-up capital of R15.6 million (R2 million from union savings and a R13.6-million loan from the Industrial Development Corporation) to a value of more than R7.5 billion in 2016. Copelyn owned ten per cent of HCI – listed shares worth about R358 million – by July 2005, His stake was worth R837 million by 2014 and close to R1 billion in 2022. Following an abortive court challenge, Golding resigned from all his HCI positions later the same week. He claimed that he had been suspended as punishment for refusing to yield to political pressure at e.TV, HCI's television news channel: according to Golding, Copelyn and HCI executive director Yunus Shaik (brother of Moe and Schabir) had driving "attempts to push me out" after Golding refused to ensure that e.TV provided favourable coverage of President Jacob Zuma in the run-up to the 2014 general election. In the aftermath, Barbara Hogan, an independent non-executive director at HCI, also resigned,

Golding and Copelyn's parting was made official at a shareholder meeting at the end of October. Copelyn vigorously denied Golding's allegation of political interference at e.TV and continued to maintain that editorial standards had been irrelevant to Golding's suspension. Both the Business Day and the Sunday Times reported that Copelyn and Golding's relationship had been deteriorating for some time before the disciplinary charges were lodged.

Oil and gas HCI is a major investor in British-based Impact Oil and Gas, which in 2014 controversially secured oil-and-gas exploration rights off the Wild Coast of South Africa's Eastern Cape.