What is happening in the world of investing?

Antowan Nöthling (AW)

What is happening in the world of investing, in the South African landscape at the moment?
Wat gebeur tans in die wêreld van belegging, in die Suid-Afrikaanse landskap?

Charisse Gregory (CG)

Gosh! Antowan A lot! Whist various industries are winding down for the year, it seems investing and private equity just cannot get out of the news.

We have seen a lot transpire this quarter. Whilst there is talk of an extended cease-fire at the Gaza strip, many know that war has a direct result on market volatility, and often commodity prices.

Bringing it all a bit closer to home, there has been a lot of talk and concern following a recent financial scandal involving a Trust, which has seen investors lose up to R3 billion. The co trustee of the Trust in question handed themselves over to the police for “irresponsible” management of the fund last month, but it poses an interesting question, namely being “what is irresponsible fund management? And how do you protect your investments?

What should investors be looking out for, to minimise their exposure to possible fraudulent investment schemes? How do we know that we have placed our money with reputable organisations?
Waarvoor moet beleggers uitkyk om hul blootstelling aan moontlike bedrieglike beleggingskemas te minimaliseer? Hoe weet ons dat ons ons geld by geloofwaardige organisasies geplaas het?

Hindsight is a beautiful thing, however there are most certainly red flags that investors can look out for when deciding to invest, or just doing continued due diligence on their asset managers of choice.

Beware of consistently high returns, when markets are downturned. Sounds rather simple, but when something is too good to be true, it usually is.

Conduct a FSCA ( Financial Sector Conduct Authority ) search on your asset manager. You need to know they are fully licenced and that they have a FSP (financial services provider) number. To that point, are their documents and agreements fully compliant? Are they disclosing their FSP licence number?

And then finally, chat to your financial advisor, as well as the compliance officer of your asset manager, and be sure that they have both internal and external compliance monitoring processes in place.

Tell us a bit about Aluma Capital then?
Vertel ons bietjie oor Aluma Capital?

We are a leading asset and fund manager with an established private equity fund and some really sexy Global Notes. Off the back of everything just said, and to put readers at ease, lets quickly eradicate any concern and confirm we are fully licensed and are an authorized financial services provider. We have all the necessary external and internal compliance monitoring processes in place.

What is pretty cool about what we doing at Aluma is the fact that we are making the private equity service and returns accessible to everyone. A lot of our readers would know that the Private Equity sector has more than R158 billion under management however historically the private equity space has been restricted to large institutions and high-net-worth individuals.

At Aluma we are offering private equity exposure, with the choice of income or growth options at returns of 13.2% OR 9.3% depending on your term on investment.

Stepping into the fixed portfolio space, we are offering returns of 12.6% with a guarantee on the initial capital. Then finally , everyone is wanting to their hard earned cash to see offshore exposure, so we are offering a Global Growth Note which is aligned to emerging markets. Its fresh, exciting and we have historically had brilliant returns.