But as the years passed and he transferred his business HQ, first to the US and then to the Bahamas, he seemed to become a truly international man, both at ease with himself and less burdened by the polecat image white South Africans had to carry with them during the apartheid years. That is not to say the bellicose businessman has turned into a vegetarian pacifist, more that he now seems comfortable as the South African Jewish kid with great vision and ambition who has ended up running an empire that is worth in excess of $2 billion and is quoted on the New York Stock Exchange.