Back on familiar ground
Busisa Jiya looked as though he was lost to the asset management industry when he was appointed head of Thomson Reuters Africa.
But marketing business information just didn’t crack it for Jiya. When he got the chance to join his old colleagues from Stanlib as MD of Absa Asset Management, he jumped at it.
The cerebral Jiya could be mistaken for the actuary he nearly became. He stopped pursuing his actuarial ambitions when he discovered investment analysis. His first investment job was as an analyst at the old SCMB Asset Management. A spell at Frankels, a colourful stockbroking firm, convinced him of his preference for the buy side.
At the Liberty group Jiya got a broad grounding as an EB consultant at its Oracle unit. And before he was 30 he was made head of the Liberty Multimanager business — a joint venture with US-based Frank Russell. Here he launched the Liberty Global Multimanager Fund, the first of its kind in SA.
Jiya still had a burning ambition to run an asset management business and he moved to Quaystone, the old BoE Asset Management. His timing was unfortunate as within four months it was disbanded and absorbed into Old Mutual. After spells at Futuregrowth and Eskom Pension & Provident Fund, Jiya moved to Thomson Reuters.
“It certainly helped my confidence to learn how a multinational operates and how to apply skills globally,” he says.
He says it is no secret that the asset management industry does not reflect the demographics of the country. “Most of the black professionals can be found in business development and operations. What is not nearly common enough is a transition of black professionals from analyst to portfolio manager. But if it’s going to be successful, that transition must take between three and five years,” he says.
However, he stresses that fund management is a niche industry. “When people go to university they know about opportunities in medicine, engineering and law, but they rarely get alerted to a prospective career in fund management.
“But managing other people’s money brings its own pressures and you need a special passion to do it,” he says.