MARK LAMBERTI: No, not at all. Look, the two transactions are not related in any way, shape, or form. I think the history is important that Stuart Stone and Grant Kurland founded Bayport as an African business, first of all, and then in 2005, came in to South Africa. In 2010, we bought the 83% of the South African business, with Grant and Stuart holding the remainder and, since then, their African business has grown impressively. The major shareholders there, are a Swedish company, and the private equity investors, Helios, has just come in with a bigger investment, into what is called BML, that is Bayport Africa. And that has facilitated the possibility of them bringing the two businesses back together again, as a Pan African lending business and with big interests in five countries in Africa, South Africa a sixth country, and Colombia.
ALEC HOGG: But it’s a similar transaction, in that respect, to Paycorp, which is also moving into Africa. The concern one would have or the market would have Mark, is that you’re a great entrepreneur. You are one of the best entrepreneurs this country has ever produced and you are selling. It sounds like the big deal or the big story that you would rather be part of.
MARK LAMBERTI: Yes, well us buying BML was out of the question, from the point of view of its rating. Today the African business is much bigger than the South African business and the Board weighed heavily on this. The possibility of having those two businesses in transaction, would make any Transaction Capital almost totally a lending business, and we felt that keeping the diversified flavour of our Financial Services Portfolio was preferable to have in that dominance in lending.
ALEC HOGG: We’ve just put a graph up on the screen, which you possibly haven’t seen yet, but the share price is down by nearly 3% today, that’s Transaction Capital’s share price. The market is not interpreting this very positively.
MARK LAMBERTI: That may be the case for the moment but I think maybe the questions are not so much around this transaction but what comes after and exactly your first point, which was, does this signal the kind of un-bundling or the winding down of Transaction Capital. That’s not the case. I think a big question is that also, with these two transactions under our belt, we’ll have something close to 2.2 billion Rand of cash on the balance sheet, which is close to half of our market capitalisation and I think the big question is, what are we going to do with that cash? So, that is not a question that I can answer today but those two uncertainties I think maybe reflected in market sentiments at the moment.
ALEC HOGG: You must have pondered somewhat though, on that 2.2 billion. Do you still have the energy and enthusiasm to do further acquisitions, or is it likely that this would be a special dividend?
MARK LAMBERTI: We can’t make that call at this stage. We are looking at things all of the time. We’re certainly intend to grow the businesses we’ve got, through bolt-n acquisitions and organically and, of course, to buy new financial services and niche businesses if we can. So, we certainly have the appetite and the energy to spend that money, but it would need to be a chunky acquisition to take all of it. We are very mindful of the fact that we can’t sit on shareholder’s money forever. So, we hope to be able to give some indication of the trend of that decision by the time we get to releasing our full year results on the 26th November.
ALEC HOGG: The other interpretation of this transaction is that Lamberti doesn’t like unsecured lending.
MARK LAMBERTI: Well, the noise around unsecured lending has been pretty loud in recent times but I think we’ve, within Bayport, have done a good job of starting to differentiate ourselves as a fairly small player in the market. I think that it would be naive to suggest that the unsecured area is friendly at the moment, but I don’t think one makes business decisions on one’s personal likes or dislikes. I think one has to consider what the prospects of the businesses are, and what you can do with it. It’s a relative game. It is not an absolute one, so I think, no. The motivation for this is just primarily strategic and that we see those two businesses coming together and. First prize would have been if they could have been under Transaction Capital’s ownership but events played out to the contrary.
ALEC HOGG: It’s been a fabulous investment for you though Mark, 650 million is what you paid in 2010; selling it for 1.3 billion. I hope that you are able to apply that 2.2, in cash, billion that is, to a similar kind of return.
MARK LAMBERTI: Yes, well I think that we’ve shown that with Paycorp and now, with this transaction, that we can get good returns over a period of time and that’s  the inherent strength of Transaction Capital that we hope to prove, going forward.
ALEC HOGG: And also it’s the inherent strength of the business’ Chief Executive who makes those decisions, Mark Lamberti.
