New CEO puts cards on table

AFTER 10 years in the industry, one of the country’s most respected value investors, RE:CM, has been repositioning itself for growth. Business Times sat down with the CEO, Jan van Niekerk, right, appointed in April, to discuss his role. The University of Stellenbosch-educated actuary was group CEO of Peregrine Holdings and chairman of the wealth management company Citadel. Tshepo Mashego reports Following former CEO Piet Viljoen must have felt like you had to fill some big shoes?

I’m not replacing Piet . . . Piet has decided to spend most of his time doing his passion, which is investment research. I had the opportunity to buy in as the owner of RE:CM. I’m joining Piet as a partner in running the business. We’ve known each other for a long time. We’ve spent a lot of time making sure his role and my role don’t clash.

For what will you be responsible?

I’ve taken responsibility for all the people management in the business and, obviously, overseeing both the investment team and the operations team. RE:CM is largely owned by its staff and management. How important is the owner-management structure for an asset manager?

For us, it’s important that we own the business and we can control it. It’s also important that we’re private, because to be a value investor we need to be patient for the cycle to work out. The best performing company in the recent Sunday Times Top 100 survey was a listed fund manager, Coronation. Don’t you think there is merit in listing and becoming a public company?

It’s important that the business remains private and owner managed. We can be patient. However, that does not mean we don’t look up to listed asset managers like Coronation . . . We benchmark ourselves not only against South African firms, but also internationally.

How will you grow RE:CM?

One of our aims is to get foreign investors in our global equity fund. The company has made some changes to RE:CM’s funds and fees in this regard. What’s that about?

RE:CM was started in 2003 with one fund that we managed. Over time we’ve launched a couple of other funds. We, however, didn’t have the right strategy upfront in the way we charged the fees and performance fees. After 10 years, we’ve come back to look at some of these inconsistencies. We’ve made changes to the entire fund range to make sure the fund names are clear — that what’s on the label is what’s inside the tin, so to speak. We’ve changed some of the fees to be market related; some fees have decreased and some have increased. We’ve also made changes to our equity fund. Whereas previously it was a flexible mandate and could hold a lot of cash, many of our investors said they wanted us to invest in stock. We’ve changed that mandate to be a full equity fund.