DAVID SHAPIRO: New technology of the 1990s opened doors to invest in foreign equities
In 1991, Ninety One’s Hendrik du Toit approached me to help him handle the settlements of a new asset management company he was starting with Investec. Hendrik, who had left Old Mutual to go on his own, told me that Stephen Koseff and Bernard Kantor, the joint MDs of Investec, had given him a grace period of two years to get the business up and running.
Wanting to keep his overheads under control and not knowing too much about back-office procedures, Hendrik promised to allocate our firm 50% of the brokerage his infant business generated to help us defray our expenses. Our costs were a modest R9,000 a month and yet, for the few years that we supported him, we hardly ever broke square...
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