Stanlib eyes a bigger share of Africa spoils
Vision to make it continent’s asset manager of choice
THABO Dloti made a critical mistake before he left Stanlib to head up Liberty — he forgot to show his successor, Seelan Gobalsamy, where the coffee machine was.
But new chief executive Gobalsamy managed to find it, so “crisis averted”, he joked. In fact, Gobalsamy is not experiencing a “crisis” anywhere like what Dloti had to deal with when he took over Stanlib asset management in 2010.
The business then, as Dloti put it in his swan song to Stanlib staff at the end of February, “was in serious trouble — we were losing key investment professionals, our fund performance was lacklustre, we lost huge client mandates and we had . . . instability in teams internally”.
In 2010, Dloti’s boss, Bruce Hemphill, had asked him to turn Stanlib around and capture third- party business. Dloti responded by launching Stanlib’s Vision 2015.
The group is doing better than it did four years ago. Total assets under management rose to R507billion by December 31 last year — the figure was R321-billion in 2010.
Stanlib’s earnings were R571-mil- lion at December 2013 compared with R164-million reported for 2010.
Dloti said earnings had benefited from gross-fee income growth of 16%, driven by a good market performance and a better fund mix, reflecting the higher proportion of retail flows in recent periods.
After he took over from Hemphill as head of Liberty, Dloti handed the Stanlib reins to Gobalsamy.
Gobalsamy said: “I suppose the question is: if everything is going well, what am I going to add?”
His next step is to build Stanlib into the “asset manager of choice in Africa”. He is thinking of appointing a managing director to focus on a continental expansion programme.
The business is growing in East Africa, but West Africa is not meeting Gobalsamy’s expectations.
Stanlib has an acquisition strategy in Nigeria headed by Samuel Ogbu, Liberty’s group executive for West Africa business development.
The group’s Africa operations are proving important as the asset manager grows. Dloti said the Africa operations performed “well” in 2012, although a R7-billion mandate was withdrawn by the South Sudan government.
At the end of December last year, assets under management from the Africa operations were R38-billion, compared with R36-billion for 2012.
Gobalsamy said Stanlib would like to reduce its reliance on Liberty, hence a focus on aggressively growing its third-party market.