Alexander Forbes was probably the most hyped new listing of 2014, but it has proved to be a flop. It now trades at a 10% discount to its initial offer price of 750c/share. Its core business of pension fund administration has proved ripe for disruption, with Sygnia and 10X offering lower-priced options. And Discovery will soon enter the market; it poached Forbes’s head of admin, Francois van Aarde. There is also scepticism about the sustainability of the African strategy (now branded Emerging Markets). Operating profit in Africa fell by 19% to R26m, not least because it lost a key account running the administration of the Botswana government pension fund. There was a leadership vacuum for more than six months after CEO Edward Kieswetter stepped down. New CEO Andrew Darfoor is coming up to his first 100 days in the job. He says Forbes’s goal is to generate cash to provide dividends to shareholders. "There is no doubt with our portfolio of businesses we can do this," he says, "but the ...
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