Ndivhuwo Mugwedi writes: Good day. I just want to do a follow up with the interview you did with Simon Raubenheimer – portfolio manager, Allan Gray. One questions which I would like you to ask any portfolio manager is this: Do they are invest in the fund that they manage?
Simon Raubenheimer responds:
Yes, we are invested in our funds.
As soon as someone is appointed to the position of portfolio manager, that person is prohibited from buying shares on our stock exchange for his personal account. In other words, I haven’t bought a JSE-listed share since 2008; Ian (Liddle, our CIO) or Duncan (Artus) since 2005.
We are not forced to invest our discretionary savings in our funds. But faced with a choice of our own funds or someone else’s, clearly we would choose ours. Over and above our discretionary savings, virtually all our staff’s retirement savings are also invested in the funds managed by us. Note that we pay the same fees as everyone else – there are no staff discounts.
In addition to all our staff, the Allan Gray Endowment, the Allan Gray Foundation as well as our company’s surplus capital is all invested in our funds.
I can take this a step further: in addition to our management + staff + company, our family and friends have also invested significant portions – often all – of their savings with us. This is not a trivial matter: my family is one of our loudest critics, and the first to complain about underperformance!
I can assure you we really do eat our own cooking.
