Rand unit plans US$70m in South African asset- manager buys

Johannesburg

RAND Merchant Insurance Holdings Ltd, an investor in South African insurance companies, intends to allocate about US$70 million to enable a unit to buy stakes in independent money-managers alongside plans for the division to build its own investment teams.

The resources for RMI Investment Managers will come from a 15 billion rand (S$1.5 billion) fundraising plan that its parent disclosed in October, the unit's chief executive officer, Chris Meyer, said on Tuesday in an interview in Johannesburg. The intention is to build businesses that can challenge the country's largest overseers of investor funds, he said.