EDITORIAL: A salute for Koseff
Stephen Koseff exemplified the virtue of an unstinting work ethic, an attention to fine detail, and that intangible thing — a feel for the craft of banking
It is often said that business doesn’t fully realise the effect of losing a great CEO until a few years later, when the remaining executives find out that the company in question doesn’t actually just run itself. So it is a measure of the esteem in which Investec supremo Stephen Koseff is held that after his last results presentation, the audience gave him a standing ovation. Koseff’s wife and son attended, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the house — including from Koseff. In this case everyone knows, even before he’s left the corner office, just how deep a loss he will be for the bank that he joined in 1981.Of course, that isn’t to say Investec hasn’t made horrendous errors. Perhaps the most notorious was the bank’s decision to buy British subprime lender Kensington, right before the subprime bubble burst in 2008. But the point is, Investec is what it is not because it didn’t make huge blunders, but in spite of them.Right from the outset, Koseff exemplified the virtue of an unstintin...
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