By Alec Hogg
Investec celebrates its 40th anniversary this year. My front row seat to this remarkable story began with a short walk down Mooi Street in 1981. I’d accepted an invitation to break bread with the five guys running an unknown leasing shop – Ian and Bernard Kantor; Stephen Koseff; Errol Grolman and Larry Nestadt. They worked in the IGI building, two blocks away from my desk. And for any underpaid young reporter, a lunch was, well, the cost of a supper saved.
Yesterday I took a short walk to another lunch at Investec. This time from the St Paul’s Underground Station to the group’s impressive London HQ at 2 Gresham Street. Very different surroundings. But the same warm welcome from Investec’s inimitable MD Bernard Kantor.
As one does, we got talking about the old days. And how, in the early 1990s, Kantor and CEO Stephen Koseff decided Investec needed to follow its clients to London. But to do it right, one of them had to relocate. At the time Kantor felt he’d drawn the short straw. But as the years passed, he settled into the London lifestyle and now describes it as the best city in the world.
At first I was a bit sad to hear him say that. Until recalling my own thoughts on leaving Newcastle for Johannesburg. Initially, the much bigger city was intimidating. I just wanted to go home. But as the years passed, the move became nothing other than natural progression, part of a growth curve. As London has been for Kantor. And thousands more South Africans. Their success in this highly competitive arena reflects well on our homeland. It is something to be celebrated. Not regretted.
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