Standard Bank, a South African headquartered multinational, said this week that a stronger rand drove its revenue down in the first four months of this year. Why is it blaming ‘currency effects’ for its four-month revenue hit? Andre Cilliers, currency strategist at TreasuryONE, joined Jackie Cameron for BizNews to discuss an important question that shareholders should be asking, factors influencing the value of the rand, and how big companies can safeguard their profits. – Jackie Cameron Andre Cilliers, currency strategist at TreasuryONE, on factors affecting the rand over the past week: It [was] a bank holiday in the UK [on Monday] and it [was] also a holiday in the United States. So a fairly quiet day. Equity markets and everything on the quiet. So the rand relatively subdued. During the course of the week, we have a few figures coming out which could cause some interesting moves. We have unemployment and non-farm payroll productivity out of the United States. So that could prove to be a market mover. If we recall, the last figure on the non-farm payrolls was a very, very bad one and missed the targets dismally. And that caused quite a bit of chaos in the market. So everybody’s looking forward to more updates on non-farm payrolls.