Small-cap analyst Anthony Clark, the founder of Smalltalkdaily Research, has become a doyen of the SA investment landscape after almost 40 years covering the JSE.
Since arriving from the UK in 1996 he’s worked for Standard Bank Equities, Genbel Securities, BOE/Nedbank Securities, Barnard Jacobs Mellet, and also spent some time at BEE investment business Vunani Securities. For the past five years he’s been fully independent as the head of Smalltalkdaily Research. Consistently rated in the top five small- and mid-cap analysts by the FM since 2009, he sat down with Business Day to tell us about his background and how he turned his passion into a career.
You still have traces of a UK accent. Tell us a bit about your background.
I’m Welsh by birth, from a humble background. I had a working-class, blue-collar, council-house childhood. I attended the local state school until I was 18. Childhood in early 1970s was hard due to the early divorce of my parents and a move from Wales to the other side of the UK to Suffolk when my mum, who was a cleaner, remarried. Sadly she passed away a few years ago from breast cancer. At 78 my dad is still a sheep farmer in Carmarthenshire. Oh, and I’m 55 years old.
How did you get into the financial services industry?
At 18 I became an engineering apprentice at a US engineering firm — Litton Industries — in my local town. They made the machines that made cars so I trained as an electrical control engineer and qualified after five years. But I hated the job — long hours and not great money. Being ambitious I wanted to get into finance, but my background and lack of education held me back. I certainly wasn’t perceived as stockbroker material in the UK during the late 1980s and early 1990s. I sent out letters to stockbrokers asking what I should do to achieve my aims. Most went unanswered.
However, one broker David Cockram at the London blue-chip private client broker Laing & Cruickshank agreed to see me. He advised me to go to university and get some form of qualification in finance. He could see I was energetic and passionate despite my humble background. I decided in August 1990 to quit engineering and use my savings to go back to university. The local council paid the fees as I was classed as a “mature student”. I enrolled at the Anglia University in Cambridge and did a three-year course in business & finance, specialising in company financial reporting and marketing. I passed with distinction at the age of 26. I worked in between at the same stockbroking firm where David Cockram had given me the advice years earlier. I applied for an advert for a junior clerk and since he remembered me — and appreciated that I had followed his advice — he hired me on the spot.
What brought you to SA?
After I finished my contract at Laing & Cruickshank I got an equity sales position at an institutional desk in London looking at emerging markets. It was 1994 as SA emerged from apartheid. My desk needed a salesman to cover the JSE and since I’d visited the country — I had an uncle working for Anglo Coal and had followed the JSE since 1985 — I got the job. In late 1995 and into 1996 big SA banks were buying stockbrokers. One of my broker counterparties, Anderson Wilson & Partners, was bought by Standard Bank. The head of research James Allan knew me from my London work and hired me as an equity analyst in February 1996. I arrived in Johannesburg in May 1996. I have been in the country ever since.
What prompted you to establish your own outfit in Smalltalkdaily and what were the challenges you faced?
Smalltalkdaily as a brand for my work has been around since 1996. Although I have been working in the small- to medium-cap equity space since 1994, it really started to take off in 2005 when as a salesman at Barnard Jacobs Mellet I was encouraged to be different and create a daily sales product. The Smalltalkdaily of today is an incarnation of that early equity sales note. When Smalltalkdaily started it was very tough: I had bills to pay and little income. But I was saved and supported by a well-known asset manager and more followed. They will always have my undying loyalty and friendship.
Now that you’ve been successfully running your own shop for several years, what lessons would you give to budding entrepreneurs?
The one thing you can’t fake is integrity, trust and the absolute value of solid relationships. If you love your work it shines through like a burning light. You can’t create that: you either have it or you don’t. Hard work only achieves so much. Passion and energy is infectious and people want to be around that. Try not to burn bridges. If people in this country recognise that you are a hard worker and add value to their lives they will support you. I am living proof of that. Never forget that client service is absolutely key — something many SA businesses forget. The client’s interest must always come first — even before your own.
Do you have any regrets about swapping a suit and tie for shorts and a T-shirt?
It was the best move I have made in my career. All of my former clients moved with me and I have a wonderfully supportive institutional and corporate client base. I work hard, long hours and my phone is always on, but I absolutely love what I do. I think that very passion in my work hopefully shines through, which is why even as a sole independent with minimal resources, no technology or global services as I work from a back bedroom in Cape Town, I still have a top FM analyst rating.
When you’re not analysing small caps and providing financial commentary how do you unwind in your spare time?
Anyone who knows me knows I love and adore my Parsons Jack Russell “Japie” so he keeps me busy. I am also a very keen cook and baker as my Twitter followers know. I read a lot, mostly finance- and business-related books and publications. I adore gardening and also gym pretty much daily. Work and the stock market, however, consumes a great deal of my life.
Would you ever return to the UK given the current state of SA?
After being in SA since 1996 I have no plans to leave. I love this country despite its chronic challenges, corruption and disreputable politics. Due to crime, three house robberies and two armed hijackings I left Johannesburg in 2009 for Cape Town which is an amazing place. In near 14 years I’ve been safe and happy. Because my work, reputation, network and relationships are so tied to SA and the JSE it would be difficult to leave and re-establish elsewhere. I’m a somebody in SA and a nobody in the UK (and the weather there is miserable too). I have no plans to ever retire and as long as my energy, passion and work remains relevant to those that support me and like to read my analysis I will work as long as I am alive. I do not see this as a job. This is a hobby that became a passion that became a career. So, SA is stuck with me.
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