Forum of frankness

The title of a glossy booklet distributed at last week’s SA investor conference in New York was Making it Happen: South Africa driven to deliver.

The title, and the booklet’s content, captured the challenge for business and government leaders who were in New York to persuade US investors representing US$2 trillion of funds under management of SA’s merits as an investment destination.

The members of the SA delegation could draw on a positive story line, particularly about what one of the CEs who attended called the “new embrace” between government, business and labour, which was much in evidence at the conference. They could highlight, too, SA’s great strengths, especially its well-developed and deep capital markets and its robust institutions and legal framework — strengths that are in contrast with the other emerging markets that the US investors watch.

Yet they had to explain why SA had arrived in New York, again, without nearly enough evidence that it was indeed “driven to deliver” on the structural economic reforms that government has promised and that the business-government-labour initiative that came together at the beginning of this year has been trying hard to accelerate.

Fortunately, if last week’s conference is anything to go by, US investors are still keen to hear the SA story, and the CEOs of SA’s largest companies are keen to work with government to tell it.

The New York conference is now in its fourth year and its sponsors — the JSE, Standard Bank, Old Mutual and UBS — were delighted with its success.

It is one of at least three such roadshow conferences that provide a platform for SA’s listed companies and government to meet investors and potential investors, and like the annual investor conferences in SA by RMB Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch Sun City, this one allows for intense one-on-one sessions behind closed doors.

There are also several emerging markets investor conferences abroad in which SA