Richard Böttger and James Faircliff both started trading stock at the age of 13. They began to invest together in 2001 and formed Tower Capital in 2008. Tower Capital Management is an alternative strategies South African fund manager, providing liquid access into African frontier markets to both onshore and offshore investors.
The number of South African companies operating in other African countries has exploded since 2006. Tower trades exclusively through the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), taking advantage of the strong corporate governance and liquidity afforded by the JSE. According to Tower, the increased size, liquidity and sophistication of the South African market mean that shorting stock to protect valid investment ideas from wider market or global concerns is now a possibility. This makes the market, and indeed Africa as a continent via the pan-African companies listed in Johannesburg, investible in a way that would not have been possible a few years ago.
Tower’s current track record with 52 months trading is 22% net annualized. Their high conviction, concentrated portfolio combines 4 sub strategies: 1. Fundamental Long, 2. Fundamental Short, 3. Opportunistic Trading, 4. Short Hedge. Both of Tower’s two short sub-strategies are profitable: 90% of the time the JSE has been up, the Tower Fund has been up, and 2 out of 3 times the JSE has been down, the Tower Fund has been up as well.
In this Opalesque.TV BACKSTAGE video, James and Richard also talk about:
- Themes and sectors to seek and to avoid when investing in Africa
- How to identify the right companies to build African exposure
- A winning strategy: Long low beta and short high beta stocks
- Hedging costs
James Faircliff and Richard Böttger are the founding Principals and owners of Tower Capital Management. They are co-portfolio managers for the ZAR fund and investment advisors for the Cayman and Delaware funds. James and Richard have a long-standing relationship, having met while employed at Brait S.E. They have collaborated professionally since 2001, investing in equities and derivatives together while in the employ of Brait S.E., and again formally since 2004 when they co-founded Thuthuka Equity and Advisory (Pty) Ltd (“Thuthuka”) in order to advise on and co-invest in a number of structured equity transactions. Thuthuka was a private equity advisory business which worked in partnership with – amongst others, Och-Ziff, Goldman Sachs SSG (Europe), Sanlam Capital Markets and Old Mutual Specialised Finance on a number of deals. They wound up Thuthuka to set up Tower Capital Management.
Richard earned an MBL cum laude in Finance at the University of South Africa and MCom in Finance from Stellenbosch University, James graduated as Bachelor of Business Science (Hons) in Finance at the University of Cape Town.
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Richard Böttger and James Faircliff both started trading stock at the age of 13. They began to invest together in 2001 and formed Tower Capital in 2008. Tower Capital Management is an alternative strategies South African fund manager, providing liquid access into African frontier markets to both onshore and offshore investors.
The number of South African companies operating in other African countries has exploded since 2006. Tower trades exclusively through the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), taking advantage of the stron
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