Classic Business

Sanlam reported a 10% increase in headline profit at the interim stage, as new business volumes increased by 40% to R157 billion in the past six months. Sales of funeral policies to Capitec clients as part of a relatively new partnership grew by 9% over the past six months. An incredibly resilient performance in probably the most stressful time for the businesses 100 year history. Michael Avery sat down with new CEO Paul Hanratty who took over from Ian Kirk in July, and in August reviewed the groups strategy, which will see Sanlam accelerate growth outside of South Africa and split the Personal Finance business unit into two units – South Africa Retail Mass and South Africa Retail Affluent, to talk about the new strategy.

Anthea Gardner, MD Cartesian Capital

Arthur Goldtsuck, MD of World Wide Worx; Dell Technologies Director, Systems Engineering, Greg McDonald & Samir Sehil, regional cloud sales manager: Middle East, Turkey and Africa, F5

Michael Avery says that the reckoning in REITland is coming as Growthpoint’s loan to value rockets to 44% from 37%. The excessive focus on income without regard to the sustainability of that income or the risks taken to generate it is exactly what got the sector into trouble. It should always have been about the balance sheet – current year income after all (until recently) was less than 10% of the value of your investment! The whole sector is complicit. It is not just the management teams. Shareholders cannot now cry “pay back the money” when they hired and approved boards and incentive schemes that generated the result it sought to. Shareholders ought not to have paid management for distribution growth only, nor should they have appointed board members to companies that have no understanding of the fundamental property business and how it creates value. Shareholders are the owners of the assets, you either put in the cash when it’s required or you hand the keys over to the debt providers. The rules were known upfront. Nobody should be bailed out of their past poor decisions. Yes, COVID and associated lockdowns have resulted in unprecedented mayhem, but the sector pretended that there were no risks to the balance sheet structures they had embraced. This was obvious nonsense. Avery speaks to Growthpoint CEO Norbert Sasse about how he plans to fix things at the country’s largest REIT.

Johann Els, chief economist at Old Mutual Investment Group

Ian Fleming, joint business rescue practitioner and CEO of Engaged Business Turnaround

As the saying goes change is the only constant unless you’re standing in front of a vending machine. And the one thing that Covid has taught us is that change is inevitable and it’s also exposed how ill equipped many of us are for change on the one hand, perhaps not having an emergency fund, or how adaptable and resilient we can be on the other as we’ve all grown accustomed to working from home in our business on the top party on the bottom work wear. A quick look around will remind us that life can change fast – as we are experiencing in this coronavirus era. Nothing lasts forever, hopefully not even the virus. We certainly don’t, nor do businesses, or leaders, movements or political parties. It is important to remember this in every aspect of life. We get into trouble when our solutions are designed for yesterday’s problems. We need to have a value system that is meaningful and looks to the future. Then we need to live our lives based on the future we desire. Andrew Bradley, former CEO of Old Mutual Wealth, the co-owner, Director and CEO of Fiscal Private Client Services, speaks to Michael Avery about how we should use the pandemic experience to reframe the questions we are asking about our financial wellbeing.

CEO Hillie Meyer

Wayne McCurrie, portfolio manager, FNB Wealth and Investments & Ricus Reeders, portfolio manager at PSG Wealth

Annabel Bishop, chief economist at Investe; Dr Azar Jammine, chief economist at Econometrix; Chris Campbell, CEO of Consulting Engineers South Africa & Webster Mfebe, CEO of the South African Forum of Civil Engineering Contractors