Were it not for apartheid-era import-protection policies and, later, sanctions increasingly isolating SA from the world, Sasfin CEO Roland Sassoon would perhaps today be minding Sasstex, the family textile trading business.But these policies made Sasstex’s business "unviable", Sassoon says, and pushed it towards its first reinvention: providing trade finance to its entrepreneur clients in the late 1960s."It wasn’t a very big business," says Sassoon, explaining that Sasstex had a few hundred customers at the time it changed its strategy and its name to Sasfin — a far cry from the 50,000 wealth, private and business clients the group has today.The story of the banking and wealth group’s humble beginnings is now the stuff of business legend, but very little is known about its early days as a banker."It wasn’t that difficult [getting a banking licence]," says Sassoon, but he points out that few small banks from that era — the late 1990s — succeeded. It had applied for, and was granted, ...
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