STEPHEN CRANSTON: Under the hood of Avena Asset Management
The trick is to stand out
Laurett Jardim’s name in Portuguese means gardener. Maybe she should have set up a chain of garden shops like Keith Kirsten’s. Instead, she has encouraged flowers to bloom in a different way. As economist at national treasury she helped bring finance to the country in the shape of bonds for the new SA. After that her CV includes some of the usual, predictable investment firms, such as Alexander Forbes, RisCura, Stanlib and RMB. She can certainly take a lot of the credit for building up a portfolio of large funds for RisCura, such as Telkom and Tshwane Municipal. I am glad to see that Jardim has decided to move away from these humdrum firms and now runs Avena Asset Management. There are many asset managers that claim to be boutique, but Avena has to be one of the few genuine ones. Jardim’s two senior colleagues don’t have a standard asset management CV like hers. Rafik Lal, the chief operations officer, has had most of his experience in the capital markets, corporate finance and priv...
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