OUR STORY
ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS
Few companies, in any sector, achieve such undeniable success that their names speak to a generation of the possibilities of business itself—vision, enterprise, accomplishment. Glen Anil, incorporated in 1948 by visionary developer Dr. Edward Rubenstein, is one. For generations of South Africans, Glen Anil is household word.
The continuing story of the company similarly transcends ordinary business narratives. It is a story of unlikely beginnings and natural gifts. Of a man ahead of his time. It is a story of great success, but it is also a tale of difficulty and tenacious hope. It is the story of a family and a country. And now it is the story of a dream reborn.
Glen Anil was named after a farm, north of Durban, where Dr. Edward Rubenstein, the son of German Jewish immigrants, completed his first township development, which he called Glenashley, in 1949. For Dr. Rubenstein, who had only recently returned from dental school in the United States, property was still something of a hobby.
Yet with its beautiful location and inventive and attractive payment terms, Glenashley proved a runaway success. Soon after, Dr. Rubenstein took on a more ambitious project, developing the township of Ballito Bay on a portion of a sugar-cane farm in the same region. Ballito Bay, which was established as a private township in 1954, proved another success.
Dr. Rubenstein ran the growing property business from the Medical Centre building in Jeppe Street, Johannesburg, where his older brother ran a pharmacy on the ground floor. Even as the business grew throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Rubenstein continued to look after the teeth of his long-term patients.
A man of rare foresight and canny business sense, Dr. Rubenstein had that mysterious, unnamable quality that separates the legend from the merely good. He was the first developer to venture to the south and northwest of Johannesburg. The suburbs of the city we know today were substantially shaped by the company.
From the mid-1960s, Edward was joined in the business by his son David, who, still in his early 20s, played an important role preparing the company for its much-awaited public listing in 1968. When Glen Anil Investments listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in November of that year, it was the largest land developer in the southern hemisphere.
Father and son working together as a team, Glen Anil then entered a period of aggressive acquisition and expansion.
The company extended its focus internationally, developing townships in Israel and Greece.
The years that followed Dr. Rubenstein’ death in 1972 would be turbulent ones for the country and for Glen Anil. The political uprisings of the mid-1970s delivered a body blow to the property sector. Along with every other listed property company in South Africa, the company went into liquidation in 1977.
In 1980, an offer of compromise was signed between W&A and David Rubenstein, with David as the director of Glen Anil as a division within W&A. In 1987, David Rubenstein ceded control of the company to W&A’s holding company, WACO. To many, Glen Anil became a memory, a fallen giant.
But not to all. Since he was a child, Daniel Rubenstein, current CEO of Glen Anil, had dreamed of reclaiming the company started by his grandfather. At the age of 18 he made his first attempt to do so. For 14 years this dream had to be deferred, until in 2016 Daniel was offered the opportunity to buy back the group. Six months later, Daniel and WACO completed the negotiation — and the wheel of history had completed its turn.
Today Glen Anil is a forward-thinking property group with interests in South Africa, Europe and the United States. Its talented team is inspired by the group’s unique history, exhilarated to stand on the shoulders of giants.
Glen Anil is not just a company but a bridge between past, present and future. To old associations, of uncommon vision and ingenuity, have been added new ones—those of courage, tenacious hope, unyielding commitment. The legendary name of Glen Anil serves not only as a reminder of what once was, but as a clarion call for what is still to come.
