The company’s holding in Nepi has allowed it to operate with somewhat less investor scrutiny over the direct operations of the company, in that much of its positive performance can be attributed to its holding in Nepi, thus obscuring the poor-returning domestic business from full view. An analysis of the company’s balance sheet and earnings from its directly controlled investments suggests that the shareholder capital invested by the company in its own directly-controlled operations, excluding its shareholding in Nepi, is earning far less than it should. A comparative analysis of listed property company NAV yields in Graph 2 demonstrates that R100 of shareholder capital invested in Nepi at book value would earn R8.20 in accounting earnings, R7.80 in Equites and R7 in Vukile1. Excluding Nepi from Fortress’ earnings and book value suggests that the same R100 would earn a mere R2.90 in the hands of the Fortress management team. This analysis would fall flat were the companies markedly different from each other, but they all have overlapping asset classes (retail and logistics) and geographic exposures (South Africa and Europe), thus rendering the comparison appropriate.