SA dollar billionaire and philanthropist Allan Gray has died at the age of 81, his Cape Town-based investment management business said on Monday.
In 1973, Gray founded the firm, which has become one of SA's biggest active asset managers. At the time, it was just a one-man company with Gray basing investment decisions on the difference between his assessment of the intrinsic value of a company and its share price. This approach later became the standard practice of the asset management industry.
Forbes estimated in 2017 that Gray, who obtained his undergraduate degree in accounting at Rhodes University and later an MBA at Harvard, had a net worth of $1.8bn (about R27bn), placing him just behind the likes of Patrice Motsepe and Naspers chair Koos Bekker on SA's richest list.
Former Allan Gray COO Mark Herdman, who went on to establish the group's Australian business Orbis Global, described Gray as “a genius” who could inspire and push everyone in his team without interfering with how they ran their respective units.
“I think that's what really made him unique,” said Herdman.
He said Gray was understood “business like nobody I've ever come across”.
“His whole investment approach is that if you understand the business and you understand its value and look at where the share price is, you can acquire shares at a price that is way below what you think its fair value is.”
Herdman, who started working at Allan Gray in 1987 when the company had a staff complement of just 25 people, said Gray paid “incredible attention to detail” and it was this focus on things that many considered insignificant that made him the investment guru he later became.
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