Women step forward

The development of black-owned stockbrokers has, if anything, been even more disappointing than the development of black-owned fund managers. There are a number of profitable black fund managers such as Taquanta and Kagiso; even a hedge fund specialist, Independent Alternatives.

The most promising black empowered stockbroker was Macquarie First South before its messy divorce.

But there is some movement at last. The new Mazi Macquarie Securities owes its existence to two of the godfathers of BEE. Malungelo Zilimbola runs Mazi Asset Management, with R49bn under management. He has several industry awards. It will be useful for him to pay cut-price fees to a vertically integrated securities business and pass on the benefits to clients.

The other strong personality is a star from the past, Zenzo Lusengo, one of the founders of African Merchant Bank (AMB). He is known as the Pele of private equity and the Johan Cruyff of corporate finance. His business is now just AMB, a much cooler name with none of the dreary baggage that goes with banks. He will play a key part in the shareholders’ consortium.

Lusengo points out that Sydneybased Macquarie has a history of expanding successfully into new markets. It is hard to keep up with all the joint ventures it has started in SA, and it has a policy of selling out to the local partner once it has passed on the relevant expertise. Its flagship venture was African Infrastructure Investment Managers, but there was also the Innofin investment platform JV with Sanlam, now called Glacier. That must have been a sought-after posting as the Macquarie expats seemed to play a lot of golf.

But neither the godfathers nor the men in the cork hats should take centre stage. The highest-profile investors will be AWCAS. These might be pronounced the same way as killer whales, but it is a business run for the benefit of black women accountants and stands for African Women Chartered Accountants.

Gugu Sepamla, who is on the AWCA board, chairs Mazi Macquarie Securities. The other woman in the public eye will be Fawzia Suliman, the stockbroker’s CEO. She trained at KPMG but has been in stockbroking for 20 years and was COO of the old Macquarie First South.

Protected lines of business

Mazi Macquarie is a full-service cash equity stockbroker competing with the multinationals. But it will have protected lines of business as more fund managers come under pressure to give more business to black-owned firms.

The other black-owned stockbroker of substance, subject to approval, will be the new Legae Peresec. A consortium led by Legae Securities is taking over Peregrine Securities, which specialises in high-volume, low-margin trades. It is particularly strong in the derivatives market, the only sector in which it produces research. At least for now, Peregrine Securities does not do any fundamental equity research.

Peregrine Group considered its securities arm to be too volatile and too capital-intensive but consortium leader Fatima Vawda understands volatility well enough, as do the godfathers of Mazi Macquarie.

The other high-profile securities transaction was the sale of 51% of Anchor Stockbrokers to Sisa Ngebulana, founder of Rebosis, the property group. He doesn’t have any share trading experience or expertise but he is a logical partner as Anchor’s niche is real estate research. Anchor Stockbrokers is predominantly a private client stockbroker, and perhaps Ngebulana can entice some black heavy hitters.

Macquarie has a policy of selling out to the local partner once it has passed on the relevant expertise