Because fund management is not a recognised profession, you often hear that people came into money management “by accident”, all too frequently as an alternative to auditing.
I, too, started writing about unit trusts and fund management by accident. I have no formal economics training. When I first started working for Andrew McNulty in the investments section of Financial Mail, I wasn’t all that clear about the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement. Then, quite by chance in 1991, it was my turn to do the monthly unit trust performance report in the days when there were about 30 funds.
Roy McAlpine of GuardBank (and Liberty Asset Management), who was taking his turn as chair of the Association of Unit Trusts, returned my call and tried his best to help me. He must have found me a very ignorant young man when I asked what fund managers did all day if they weren’t at their desks buying and selling companies. His helpfulness certainly contrasted with the aloofness of Allan Gray — though, to be fair, with Mark Herdman’s help, Allan himself and Simon Marais made up for this later in my career.
They say stick with the winners and, over the years, I have been a consistent supporter of the “CIA”, as the big independent gorillas — Coronation, Investec and Allan Gray — came to be known. I supported them with my own money and in my role as trustee of the Times Media Limited Pension Fund. That’s not to say I never called them out when they were stumbling, of course, but as I get older I can see the futility of worrying about short-term performance. It was really the combination of poor short-term performance and arrogance that I couldn’t tolerate.
All three CIA firms have shown humility. That might seem surprising given the bombastic nature of some of the individuals involved and their strong views, but losing clients’ money should be deeply humbling, and often humiliating.
I have been asked why I have written this book so soon after Muitheri Wahome’s Building Capital: A History of Asset Management in South Africa was published in 2021. The simple answer is that my publishers think this project will work commercially.
If you have read Muitheri’s book, be assured that what follows is completely different. It couldn’t fail to be because she is an actuary and I am a journalist. The other difference is that I know, or have at least met, everyone in this book (with rare exceptions, such as former Allan Gray bond manager Gigi van Zyl). I even joined a queue and Warren Buffett signed a pack of playing cards and smiled at me after the 2005 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.
You won’t be reading about the discovery of the gold in the Witwatersrand or the founding of Old Mutual in 1845 in this book. And I have been asked by the publisher not to include intimidating tables or spreadsheets because this book is for the lay reader, not exclusively for industry insiders.
This is a book about business success. I make no apology for sticking to the winners. The bulk of my own liquid assets are invested with these three managers, with Ninety One administering my living annuity.
Nevertheless, this is an unauthorised book. I have asked for input only to avoid factual errors.
Perhaps a more grandiose ambition is for it to serve as a memoir for my own generation of fund managers, the baby boomers. I was encouraged to write this book “for the industry” by boomer friends such as Anet Ahern (who is retiring as CEO of PSG Asset Management in May 2025), Tony Bell, Johan van der Merwe and Neil Brown before it is all forgotten.
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