Manager Research

On the 15th of November Prudential officially changed its name to M&G Investments. This is in line with the acquisition by M&G plc of Prudential Portfolio Managers (South Africa) which occurred earlier in the year, and we wrote about here.   The changes to Prudential’s name and ...

Investec Limited's involvement in the Cum-Ex tax Investigation has recently resurfaced in the media. The Cum-Ex Tax Investigation is a name given to a large number of transactions that took place prior to 2012 in Europe. It involved exploiting a loophole in European tax law that enabled more than on...

We recently completed a full review of the Mazi Prime Equity Fund. The outcome of this review is that we have downgraded the fund from Tier 2 to Tier 3. Below we provide an overview of our rationale. Background Mazi Capital was founded in 2006 by Malungelo Zilimbola after he left RMB. The company ...

We recently concluded a review on Prescient’s range of funds which included the initiation of coverage on the Prescient Flexible Bond Fund at a Tier 2 rating. Outside of this new fund rating, we have also upgraded the rating on the Prescient Balanced Fund and moved two strategies to the watchl...

Stanlib Asset Management (Stanlib) recently announced that it had partnered with JP Morgan Asset Management (JPMAM) as its new offshore partner. JPMAM is set to provide Stanlib with investment management capabilities to complement the SA manager’s existing offering.   According to Stanl...

Recently, RMI Investment Manager (RMI) concluded a transaction with Royal Bafokeng Holdings (RBH) whereby RBH purchased an effective 11.4% stake in Truffle via RMI. RBH already has a 2.1% stake in Truffle through RMI’s listed entity RMI Holdings. This transaction will bring RBH’s effecti...

Earlier this year we wrote a note highlighting the departure of Rashaad Tayob from ABAX. This note can be found here. Our conclusion then was that, despite Rashaad’s departure, ABAX remained a stable business with a long-standing fixed income process and philosophy. The remaining team was stil...

This week, Sanlam announced that it had reached a deal with Absa which will result in Absa Financial Services Limited (AFS) exchanging its investment management business, Absa Investments (AFM), for a shareholding of up to 17.5% in Sanlam Investment Holdings Proprietary Limited (SIH), which is the p...

Sanlam Investment Management (SIM) recently issued a ballot to investors seeking to change the investment policy of the SIM Active Income fund to invest in only South African assets. This is a change from the current investment policy which allows the fund to invest up to 30% in foreign assets. Whil...

In June Coronation issued a ballot which sought to implement a change in the structure of the Coronation Optimum Growth Fund. We commented on the proposed change here. Coronation have now confirmed that the ballot was successful with the conversion to a feeder fund structure taking place on the 15t...