Targeted sanctions are aimed at politicians. Whether they stay there depends on who owns what.

A senior South African business leader recently urged Washington to target the individuals behind contested policies, not the country.

On the evidence we gathered, whether that would spare companies depends less on whom a measure names than on what the named people own.

The idea is attractive for an obvious reason: narrow measures, narrow damage. But it rests on a specific assumption, that a measure on a person stays with that person.

We traced how US measures have travelled from the people they name to companies they do not. We looked at ten comparator experiences and at South Africa's own episodes, working from statute, Treasury rules and releases, court judgments, central-bank reviews, company filings and peer-reviewed studies. Every source was fetched and checked on 5 October 2026.

The answer turns on a 50% line. US ownership rules extend a block to companies "regardless of whether the entity itself is listed". In one case, a Swiss listed company that was never named was blocked overnight because a designated shareholder held more than half of it. It described itself as "in danger of becoming insolvent", and it recovered only after a buy-back cut that stake to 48.83%. Control, a signing role or a contract that defines sanctioned parties as those "owned or controlled" by a listed person can do the same work.

Where only politicians without corporate holdings were named, we found no documented spillover to companies. That finding covers the public record and a small set of cases. It is not proof of safety.

South Africa adds a twist. Its law gives US lists no effect; the national list replicates the UN's and nothing more. Banks apply US lists anyway, as a matter of policy, and one major bank says it does so "beyond its legal requirements". The courts have held that no minister can intervene in a bank's decision about a client. So under a measure aimed only at politicians, a bank's own screening would be the only route to a company. Every step of that route exists here. We found no case, anywhere, of the whole route operating.

The targeted approach does have something going for it. Where nobody named crosses one of those lines, the legal reach of a blocking measure stops with the person. And South Africa's own experience of the FATF grey-listing, a country-level measure with no blocking at all, produced what the central bank called a "relatively muted" reaction: friction, not rupture.

Two things surprised us.

Our view, for what it is worth.

The debate has been framed as a choice between hurting a few and hurting many. We think the more useful question is a narrower one, and it belongs to each board rather than to Washington. A board cannot choose what the United States does. It can know, before anything happens, what a measure would meet if it arrived. The questions are not complicated:

What the evidence cannot do is size the effect. Magnitudes, timing and who might be named are beyond what the public record can establish, and we have not tried to guess. The study names no company and takes no view on any government's policy. The decision stays with each board.

If the public record misses something you know, we would like to hear it. The full study, including a ten-step self-screen and a set of dated early-warning indicators, is available on request.