STEPHEN CRANSTON: What it would mean for your retirement savings if prescribed assets were introduced
Futuregrowth’s success shows that commercial and social considerations can be combined — but not if pension funds are forced to invest in dysfunctional SOEs
It is ironic that one of bulwarks of the apartheid regime, prescribed assets, could be coming back. It will be sold with a different kind of rhetoric: that financial institutions are not doing enough for the developmental state; that they are chasing the short-term returns of the JSE and overseas markets instead of investing in long-term infrastructure projects.
But what this kind of talk forgets is that most of the money invested in pension funds doesn’t belong to bankers working in the marbled banking halls of Sandton. It belongs to ordinary savers who need the maximum possible return on investment. As the Association for Savings & Investments (Asisa) head Leon Campher puts it, behind every rand is an ID number...
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