Bob van Dijk

Bob van Dijk
Born	Template:Birth year and age
Birthplace	Near Eindhoven, Netherlands
Nationality	Dutch
Occupation	Businessman
Title	Former Group CEO, Naspers and Prosus
Known for	CEO of Naspers and Prosus (2014–2023)
Education	INSEAD (MBA) Erasmus University Rotterdam (MSc)

Bob van Dijk (born 1972) is a Dutch businessman who served as the group chief executive officer of Naspers, the South African multinational internet and media conglomerate, and its international subsidiary Prosus, from April 2014 to September 2023. During his nearly decade-long tenure at the helm of both companies, van Dijk oversaw the management of one of the world's largest technology investment portfolios, anchored by Naspers's position as the single-biggest shareholder in Chinese technology giant Tencent. Before joining Naspers, van Dijk held leadership positions at eBay and served as an associate at the global management consultancy McKinsey & Company. He holds an MSc in econometrics from Erasmus University Rotterdam and an MBA from INSEAD. His abrupt departure from Naspers and Prosus in September 2023 drew significant attention in international business media, with his successor, Fabricio Bloisi, eventually taking the permanent CEO role after an interim period led by Ervin Tu, the company's former mergers and acquisitions chief.

Early Life

Bob van Dijk was born in 1972 and grew up near Eindhoven, in the southern part of the Netherlands. Eindhoven, known as a center of technology and innovation in the Netherlands due to the historical presence of companies such as Philips and the Eindhoven University of Technology, provided the backdrop for van Dijk's formative years. Beyond these basic biographical details, limited public information is available regarding his family background and upbringing.

Education

Van Dijk pursued his undergraduate and initial graduate studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, one of the Netherlands' foremost research universities, where he earned a Master of Science (MSc) degree in econometrics. Econometrics, a discipline combining economics, mathematics, and statistical methods, provided van Dijk with a strong quantitative foundation that would later inform his career in business strategy and technology investment.

He subsequently obtained a Master of Business Administration (MBA) from INSEAD, the prestigious international business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore. INSEAD's MBA program, known for its accelerated one-year format and international cohort, is among the most selective graduate business programs globally. The combination of van Dijk's quantitative training in econometrics and his MBA from INSEAD positioned him for a career trajectory that would span management consulting, e-commerce, and global technology investment.

Career

Early career at McKinsey & Company

Van Dijk began his professional career as an associate at McKinsey & Company, the global management consulting firm. McKinsey associates typically work on strategy, operations, and organizational projects for major corporations and institutions. While the specific duration and scope of van Dijk's work at McKinsey are not extensively documented in public sources, the firm has served as a launching pad for numerous technology and media executives. His time at McKinsey provided him with experience in strategic analysis and corporate advisory work that would prove relevant to his later roles in the technology sector.

eBay

Before joining Naspers, van Dijk worked at eBay, the American multinational e-commerce corporation. His experience at eBay gave him direct exposure to the operations and strategic challenges of running a global online marketplace, a domain that would become central to his later work at Naspers. The specific roles he held and the duration of his employment at eBay are not fully detailed in publicly available sources, but his time at the company placed him within the rapidly expanding world of global e-commerce during a period of significant growth for the industry.

Naspers: Allegro division

Van Dijk's path to the top of Naspers began with his role as CEO of the company's Allegro division. Allegro is a major e-commerce platform based in Poland and is one of the largest online marketplaces in Central and Eastern Europe. Leading the Allegro division gave van Dijk significant operational experience within the Naspers ecosystem and demonstrated his ability to manage a large-scale e-commerce business in a competitive and growing market. His success at Allegro was a factor in his selection as the group's overall chief executive.

Appointment as Naspers Group CEO

In late 2013, Naspers announced that Bob van Dijk would become the company's new group chief executive officer, effective April 1, 2014. At the time of his appointment, van Dijk was described as a "company newcomer" in some media reports, reflecting the fact that while he had led the Allegro division, he was not as well known within the broader Naspers corporate hierarchy or in South African business circles as some other potential candidates.

Naspers, originally founded in 1915 as a South African newspaper publisher, had by the time of van Dijk's appointment transformed itself into a global consumer internet company with investments in e-commerce, online classifieds, food delivery, fintech, and social media across more than 100 countries. The company's most significant asset was—and remains—its substantial shareholding in Tencent Holdings, the Chinese technology conglomerate behind the WeChat messaging platform and a range of other internet services. Naspers first invested in Tencent in 2001, acquiring a roughly 46% stake for approximately $32 million, an investment that would grow to be worth hundreds of billions of dollars over the following two decades.

Van Dijk assumed the CEO role at a time when Naspers was grappling with a persistent challenge: the company's market capitalization on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) was substantially lower than the value of its Tencent stake alone, meaning that the market effectively assigned a negative value to the rest of Naspers's portfolio. Addressing this so-called "discount to net asset value" became a defining strategic preoccupation of van Dijk's tenure.

Tenure and the creation of Prosus

During his years as group CEO, van Dijk pursued a strategy focused on building and investing in growth-stage technology companies globally, with a particular emphasis on online classifieds, food delivery, payments and fintech, and edtech. Under his leadership, Naspers made significant investments in companies across these verticals in markets including India, Brazil, Russia, and various countries in Southeast Asia and Europe.

One of the most notable strategic moves during van Dijk's tenure was the creation and listing of Prosus N.V. in September 2019. Prosus was established as the international consumer internet arm of Naspers and was listed on the Euronext Amsterdam stock exchange. The creation of Prosus was intended, in part, to address the persistent discount between Naspers's market value and the value of its underlying assets by providing international investors with a more accessible vehicle for investing in the Naspers portfolio. The Tencent stake was transferred to Prosus, and Naspers retained a controlling interest in Prosus.

Van Dijk served as CEO of both Naspers and Prosus simultaneously during this period. Despite the Prosus listing, the discount to net asset value remained a persistent concern for shareholders and analysts. In response, the companies under van Dijk's leadership undertook a series of measures, including share buyback programs and, notably, an open-ended share repurchase program funded by the gradual sale of a portion of the Tencent stake. This program, announced in 2022, involved Prosus selling down its Tencent holding in a measured fashion and using the proceeds to buy back its own shares and those of Naspers, with the aim of narrowing the discount.

The decision to sell Tencent shares was significant and closely watched by the market. While it provided capital for buybacks and helped reduce the discount, it also meant that the companies were reducing their exposure to what had been by far their most valuable single investment.

Throughout his tenure, van Dijk also oversaw Naspers and Prosus's investments in a range of other technology businesses. These included stakes in food delivery companies, online classifieds platforms, and fintech operations in various emerging markets. However, the performance of many of these investments relative to the Tencent stake was a recurring point of scrutiny from investors and analysts.

Departure from Naspers and Prosus

On September 18, 2023, Naspers and Prosus announced that Bob van Dijk had stepped down as chief executive officer of both companies, effective immediately. The announcement was widely described in the media as abrupt and unexpected. The Financial Times reported on his departure, noting his role atop the company that was the single-biggest shareholder in Tencent. TechCrunch characterized the resignation as an abrupt step down from the top role at the Dutch e-commerce investor and its controlling shareholder.

Upon his departure, Ervin Tu, who had served as the company's mergers and acquisitions chief, was named as interim CEO to take the helm of both Naspers and Prosus. Bloomberg News reported that van Dijk would remain as a consultant to the board following his resignation from the chief executive position.

ITWeb, a South African technology news outlet, also confirmed the departure, reporting that the announcement was made by Naspers on the morning of September 18, 2023.

The specific reasons behind van Dijk's sudden departure were not extensively detailed in the initial public announcements. However, the move came after years of investor pressure regarding the persistent discount to net asset value and questions about the strategic direction of the companies' non-Tencent investments. Van Dijk had spent more than nine years as group CEO, making him one of the longer-serving chief executives in the global technology investment space during a period of significant market volatility.

Post-departure compensation

Following his departure, van Dijk's compensation arrangements attracted media attention. According to a report by MyBroadband, a South African technology publication, van Dijk received R165.8 million (South African rand) from Naspers after he stepped down on September 18, 2023. The report noted that this amounted to approximately R2.2 million per month during the post-departure period, reflecting contractual obligations related to his consultancy arrangement and other separation terms.

Personal Life

Van Dijk is a Dutch national who was born and raised near Eindhoven in the Netherlands. Limited information about his personal life is available in public sources. During his tenure at Naspers and Prosus, he was based in the Netherlands, where Prosus maintained its headquarters in Amsterdam. His public profile has been primarily defined by his professional career in the technology and investment sectors.

Recognition

During his tenure as CEO of Naspers and Prosus, Bob van Dijk was a prominent figure in the global technology investment landscape. As head of two publicly listed companies with a combined portfolio spanning dozens of countries and multiple sectors of the internet economy, he was regularly featured in international business media, including the Financial Times, Bloomberg, and Reuters.

The creation and listing of Prosus on the Euronext Amsterdam in 2019 was one of the largest European technology listings and drew significant attention from the investment community. Van Dijk's role in orchestrating this listing and managing the complex corporate structure linking Naspers and Prosus placed him among the most closely watched executives in the intersection of emerging market technology and European capital markets.

His departure in September 2023 was covered extensively by leading global news outlets, including the Financial Times, Reuters, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, and numerous South African media organizations, reflecting the significance of his position and the unexpected nature of the announcement.

Legacy

Bob van Dijk's tenure at Naspers and Prosus spanned a transformative and often turbulent period for the global technology sector. He assumed the CEO role at a time when Naspers was already one of the most valuable companies listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, primarily due to its Tencent stake, and he oversaw the company's efforts to diversify its portfolio and establish an independent international presence through Prosus.

The creation of Prosus in 2019 represented one of the most significant corporate restructurings in the history of the South African and European technology sectors. By listing Prosus on Euronext Amsterdam, van Dijk and the Naspers board sought to unlock value for shareholders by giving international investors a direct avenue to invest in the Naspers internet portfolio without the complexities associated with the JSE listing.

However, the persistent discount to net asset value remained a challenge throughout van Dijk's tenure and was a central issue in the discourse surrounding his leadership. Despite efforts including share buybacks and the gradual monetization of the Tencent stake, the market continued to value both Naspers and Prosus at a discount to the sum of their parts. This issue, combined with the mixed performance of non-Tencent investments, shaped the narrative around van Dijk's legacy as CEO.

The open-ended Tencent share sale program initiated in 2022 was a strategic shift that acknowledged the need to actively manage the discount rather than rely solely on operational performance of portfolio companies to close the valuation gap. This approach represented a significant evolution in the companies' capital allocation strategy.

Van Dijk's post-departure compensation of R165.8 million, as reported by MyBroadband, also became part of the public discussion surrounding executive pay practices at major South African-listed companies.

His career trajectory—from management consulting at McKinsey, through e-commerce at eBay and Allegro, to the helm of one of the world's largest technology investment groups—illustrates a path through the evolving landscape of global internet business in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.