Investor Argon bides its time

Black investment firm Argon Asset Management has grown its institutional asset base to R27 billion over the past decade, but said there were no plans to take the owner-managed firm public.

Luyanda Joxo, head of institutional business, said he did not want to “pre-empt anything”. “The business evolves ... but has “no listing plans as yet.”

Fuelled by the entrepreneurial spirit of its chief executive officer, Mothobi Seseli, the firm was set up in April 2005 and co-founded by Joxo and Sello Setai, head of finance and operations.

From challenging beginnings – it took about 18 months to land its first client with no investment track record – its assets under management have grown substantially. Argon is one of several external asset managers appointed by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC) for the Government Employees Pension Fund (GEPF), but it is unclear what the assets managed on behalf of the PIC amount to.

Argon follows a relative value strategy – buying good quality companies cheaply – but is benchmark cognisant.

Although its assets are still dwarfed by the giants of the industry (Coronation managed R636 billion at the end of March) it has cemented its position amongst mid-sized firms.

The next step is to get traction in the retail segment. The firm launched a retail platform on March 1.

Joxo said the initial focus would be offering a pooled vehicle for smaller institutional pension funds that would not be economical to run on a standalone basis.

The idea was not to design specific products for the retail market, but that retail investors could access its existing range of institutional funds – which covers a range of asset classes – through the platform.