South African investors are showing a growing appetite for private markets investments, including private equity opportunities, according to local investment advisor, RisCura Solutions.
South African investors are showing a growing appetite for private markets investments, including private equity opportunities, according to local investment advisor, RisCura Solutions.
Commenting on the uptick in interest from South African allocators, Heleen Goussard, Head of Alternative Investment Services at RisCura, told Private Equity Wire of a “consistent appetite” for private equity in the region, and stated that the business is looking to add more PE expertise to its platform.
The Cape Town-headquartered investment consultant, with USD250 billion under advisory and management, is also looking into venture capital opportunities in China, despite the unease created by a series of crises in sectors such as FinTech, engendered by regulatory challenges, commenting that this contradictorily makes it “an even better opportunity to invest now.”
RisCura, which was founded in South Africa but is now a global emerging markets firm with offices in Mauritius, Hong Kong, the US and London, works predominantly with institutional clients, including trustees, asset owners and asset managers. The company helped to pioneer risk performance reporting for pension funds and advises some of the largest pension funds in South Africa.
Covering a wide range of ‘alternatives’, RisCura currently favours private equity managers over more liquid alternatives, like hedge funds, since, according to Goussard, “the depth of capital allocations is currently more available in the private equity market than in the hedge fund market.”
On the hedge fund side, George Tsinonis, Head of Investment Analytics at RisCura, revealed that, though hedge fund strategies in the South African context remained resilient during the Covid-19 pandemic, the market has “stayed stable, but hasn’t grown significantly,” highlighting the differing appetite for private equity and hedge funds among South African investors.
Tsinonis adds that long/short equity “still dominates the South African market.” He described the strategy as “the easiest to deploy,” adding that it gives managers, and therefore clients, more flexibility, allowing them to take a directional view on their allocations.
