South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s Alexander Forbes Group hunts for new deals

Alexander Forbes Group Holdings Limited is on the hunt for new acquisitions in a bid to build out its employee benefits offering.

The group is an investment holding majority-owned by South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital.

According to Bloomberg, the Johannesburg-based diversified financial services group has an operational footprint in Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and the Channel Islands and is planning to make a substantial acquisition in the near future.

Alexander Forbes Group CEO Dawie de Villiers revealed that the acquisition will be strategic and will focus on new businesses as the market consolidates.

“As a result of the pandemic, we are seeing much more engagement with players that were not at the table in the past,” he said. “The focus now will be on new business and about more acquisitions as the market consolidates.”

To scale up its asset management capacities and boost its surplus capital, the South African investment company has finalized plans to exit its insurance arm to Sanlam Limited. The closing of the deal will see Sanlam take over the arm, which had an insurance premium income of 1 billion rand ($72.7 million) as of late March.

The new acquisition will enable the investment company to bulk up its core operations, while boosting its assets as South Africa expects its economy to rebound by 4.2 percent this year.

Alexander Forbes Group is the largest multi-manager in South Africa with more than 1.3 million customers and $22.47 billion (R310 billion) in assets under administration and management.

According to Forbes, Motsepe has a net worth of $3.1 billion. He owns a majority stake of 35.1 percent in the investment holding through African Rainbow Capital. It is worth noting that African Rainbow Capital is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Ubuntu-Botho Investments, a black-owned and controlled company that Motsepe created in 2004.