Cape Town to Warsaw: the most underpriced trade in Europe.
I have spent fifteen years moving between South Africa and Poland. Born in Potchefstroom. Studied environmental law at North-West. Moved to Warsaw in 2011. Co-founded a small cross-border advisory in 2025 with a South African attorney. In between, I have watched roughly one hundred conversations that should have ended in a deal end in nothing.
The reason they ended in nothing is the same reason every time. Both sides priced the trade correctly. There was just no one in the middle who spoke both languages.
The shape of the asymmetry
South African founders price like a frontier market and execute like a developed one. They have South African operational discipline (real, learned from running businesses through eighteen-hour load-shedding), South African pricing (USD-denominated talent at half what Warsaw charges and a quarter of what London charges), and South African ambition (the median Cape Town founder I meet would be considered hyperaggressive in Munich). The world undervalues this consistently.
European capital underwrites like nervous tourists. The same capital that will write a €40 million Series B into a Berlin SaaS company with three months of revenue will not write €4 million into a Stellenbosch industrial-AI company with five years of customers because it is, quote, "complicated to diligence." It is not complicated to diligence. The diligence team has just never been to Stellenbosch.
The arbitrage, in other words, is not the deal flow. It is the broker shortage.
Three things I have learned trying to broker it
Ⓐ Legal is the bottleneck no one talks about. South African company law is closer to UK common law than EU civil law. The two systems do not naturally talk. Every cross-border deal I have closed has needed an attorney on each end who understands the other. They are extremely rare. Find them, retain them, do not let them retire.
Ⓑ Currency is a feature, not a bug. The rand has done what the rand does. EU buyers see this as risk. ZA sellers see this as a sale. The two readings can be reconciled by anyone willing to spend ninety minutes explaining hedging to both sides. Most deal teams will not spend ninety minutes.
Ⓒ The cultural translation is the real work. South African pragmatism reads as undersell to a German balance sheet. German precision reads as cold to a Stellenbosch founder. Neither side is wrong. Both sides walk away thinking the other did not respect them. A broker who can sit between those two readings and translate, in real time, is worth more than any spreadsheet.
I would rather broker one Cape Town to Warsaw deal a quarter for the rest of my career than chase any other geography. The pricing is right. The execution risk is lower than consensus thinks. The competition is essentially zero.
The next decade of African industrial growth is going to flow through European capital one cable at a time, whether the brokers exist or not. The brokers will be built. The only question is who builds them.