Turning a seven-entity group cash-flow positive

The situation

TOHI Group is a family-held South African property investment and development business with shareholders in the Netherlands. It was originally The Orange House Investments (Pty) Ltd.

When I arrived in 2014 it was running at roughly R80,000 a month in operating losses. The portfolio was real and the assets were sound; the structure around them was not doing the work a structure is supposed to do. Shareholders were in another country and another language, which makes reporting discipline a condition of trust rather than an administrative task.

I joined as project manager, became managing director in 2018, and was registered with the CIPC as an executive director in November 2024.

What I did

I designed and delivered the 2021 restructure. The group became a multi-entity holding — TOHI Properties, TOHI Operations and TOHI Developments as subsidiaries, with a further subsidiary for each property held. That is a deliberate shape: it isolates risk per asset, makes each property's performance legible on its own, and gives a family shareholding something it can actually make decisions against.

Then I owned it. Full P&L across seven entities and a 22-asset portfolio. Statutory director with board representation across every group entity. The primary banking and treasury mandate at Nedbank. CIPC filings, annual financial statements, SARS submissions across VAT, PAYE and income tax, and group payroll on SAGE.

I reported to shareholders monthly and quarterly, in Dutch and English.

The properties were not a spreadsheet either — leasing, installations, maintenance and regulatory certification across all 22, and project management on developments including a residential sale over R5m.

What changed

The group went from about R80,000 a month in operating losses to cash-flow positive, and held it through a difficult macro cycle including COVID-19.

I exited in March 2026 with it in that position.

The restructure is the part that outlasts me. A holding structure with a subsidiary per property is still doing its job after I have gone, which is the only real test of an operating model.

What I'd do differently

The restructure landed in 2021, seven years in, and it is fair to ask why it took that long.

Some of it could not have happened sooner. The business was running at a loss when I arrived, with no reserves and shareholders who were keeping it afloat rather than funding change. A restructure costs money and attention before it returns either, and there was neither to spend. COVID is what finally made the structural problem impossible to argue with — which is a poor reason to fix something, but it is the real one.

What I would change is the sequencing of my own case. I spent years improving how the business ran inside a structure that was the actual constraint. Fixing the symptom well delays the argument about the cause, because things get better and the pressure comes off. If I had that time again I would have made the structural argument earlier and harder, while the numbers were still bad enough to make it obvious.

The wider lesson is about governance in a closely held business, where ownership and management sit close together and commercial decisions carry more than commercial weight. That is not a reason to avoid the work. It is a reason to separate the two formally, early, and in writing — before you need the separation rather than after.