Taking their place in the sun
These are some of the women who have entered the maledominated industry and stayed the course
If Anet Ahern and Gail Daniel are the Maggie Smith and Judi Dench of SA fund management, then Vanessa Hofmeyr must be the Emma Thompson. Back then, as Vanessa Carlow, she started her asset management career at just 23 at the old Syfrets Managed Assets, close to parliament in Cape Town. “Back in 1988 I certainly stood out in the investment team, but they liked me enough to invite me to join them when the majority of the team broke off to join Coronation.”
As well as running the original Coronation Equity Fund soon after it started in 1996, she also ran the small cap fund during a short stint in Johannesburg, where the vast majority of small caps were and are headquartered.
Hofmeyr is one of very few women portfolio managers to work at two of the large shops, as she later ran the Investec Growth Fund. She hasn’t been in the front line as much as others, as she is a firm believer in a balanced approach to life. She opted for the more relaxed pace of the Citadel investment team in which she introduced direct share portfolios, and now works for low-profile investment boutique BACCI — which means Kiss, as in “keep it simple stupid”.
“I enjoy the fact that you get to see and know your client at wealth managers, it is so much more real than institutional asset management.”
The most senior woman in today’s Coronation is Kirshni Totaram, global head of institutional business. She ended up in asset management by complete accident. “I was looking for a new opportunity to grow and improve my technical skills in the financial services area.”
She is a qualified actuary and a CFA charterholder. “I started my career in 1995 as an actuarial assistant at Sanlam and then spent three years in the HIV/AIDS research unit at Metropolitan Life.” She became head of Institutional Business 16 years ago after the departure of Magda Wierzycka.
She says more needs to be done to increase the participation of women in the fund management industry.
One industry success has been the rise of Meryl Pick at Old Mutual Equities. At 35 she is taking over management of the oldest fund in the industry, the Investors’ Fund, which she will co-manage with Siboniso Nxumalo. Pick is a chemical engineer and worked at Unilever and then at Absa, where she helped to recruit engineers into the business, She met Nxumalo at her MBA class. He suggested she join the Old Mutual trainee analyst programme. “I traded shares as a hobby and realised I could actually get paid for it. “Old Mutual has been an enabling environment, but it is still male-dominated and it took time to build trust and relationships.”