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Investment
May 28, 2019

STANLIB bolsters investment management team

<strong>By: STANLIB</strong>

<h2><strong>STANLIB bolsters investment management team on its journey to improve performance</strong></h2>

STANLIB recently announced a pipeline of strategic management moves in its investment team, marking the next phase of its performance-enhancing drive to fuel future growth.

Since the announcement of its performance drive in 2018 the group has achieved consolidation of its equity capabilities, bolstered its index capabilities and established its Credit Alternatives team. It has also implemented a much-needed rationalisation of STANLIB’s product range and significantly strengthened its leadership team - both key milestones for future growth. These efforts are already having an impact, as evidenced by a 41% increase in earnings for the twelve months to December 2018, improved investment performance in core retail and institutional equity and balanced funds, and significant growth in external third party client cash inflows.

The group announced a series of senior level management changes that will take effect over the course of 2019, to strengthen the quality and depth of its investment teams.

Commenting on the announcement, Giles Heeger, executive, Asset Management, said: <em>“Over the past eighteen months STANLIB has made meaningful progress to improve investment performance, but there is still work to be done. The bolstering of our investment teams is an important step in delivering on our strategy and will go a long way to support the execution on the next phase of growth for the business.”</em>

STANLIB’s Fixed Income business embarked upon a journey three years ago to ensure that its leadership team was robust, stable and well positioned for future growth. As part of this journey, Victor Mphaphuli joined Henk Viljoen as co-head of the franchise in 2016, with a view to ultimately adopt responsibility for the team. STANLIB is excited to announce that Victor will be taking over as sole head of Fixed Income over the course of the next four months. Victor will assume responsibility for a solid and stable team with a stellar investment performance record. STANLIB is also excited to announce that Henk Viljoen will be joining its Equity and Balanced team as senior portfolio manager focussed on enhancing the tactical asset allocation capability. His role will be critical to improving the breadth of asset class skills and to complement the equity skills in the balanced portfolio.

Over the past eighteen months, the Equity and Balanced division has made a number of improvements to processes and resourcing, resulting in the consolidation of all balanced and equity capabilities into a single area. The team is well-resourced and led by seasoned professional Herman van Velze, and has yielded substantial improvements in short-term performance measures (recently climbing from 4<sup>th</sup> to 1<sup>st</sup> quartile performance in the Morningstar rankings<sup>[1]</sup>). Warren Buhai, portfolio manager, STANLIB Multi-Asset, will be moving to the STANLIB Absolute Return team, after 10 years of invaluable service in Multi-Asset. His new role is designed to supplement the asset allocation expertise and provide continuity on key client portfolios. Warren’s move to the Absolute Return team will be a phased transition during the course of 2019.

In its Absolute Return area, STANLIB will extend its scope to incorporate a multi-strategy approach to meet demand for an outcomes based, dynamic, asset allocation investment strategy. This is in line with international trends, which are driving fund managers to a broader variety of sophisticated, diversified strategies, less dependent on equity market returns. Marius Oberholzer, who heads up the team, has a depth of international experience managing such strategies, and looks forward to welcoming Warren in due course. STANLIB is committed to bolstering the team to support this transition and ensure continued delivery of a strong investment performance in the Absolute Return portfolios.

The STANLIB Listed Property team has just welcomed Nesi Chetty, formerly Head of Listed Property at MMI Holdings and Nicolas Lyle formerly property development director at RMB Westport.  Nesi joins as a senior portfolio manager and Nic takes on a senior analyst role. Their skills strongly complement the existing team and will contribute meaningfully to the team’s success in an important area.

Derrick Msibi, Chief Executive said: <em>“We congratulate team members on their new roles and thank them for joining us in this transition as we build a stronger performing business. We would also like to welcome on board our new joiners at a very exciting time for the business. Today’s announcement speaks to the depth of talent at STANLIB and to our commitment to leveraging that talent to build a stronger business in a measured way - retaining our institutional knowledge, while evolving our investment strategies and building a more performance oriented culture.”</em>

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