Seriti Capital Partners has acquired 100% of the shares of Cannon Asset Managers, a South African-based asset management firm, from Bidvest Financial Services.

The acquisition will create one of the very few black-owned asset management companies which will have a fully fledged global offering.

Founded in 1998, Cannon Asset Managers has investment expertise across all asset classes both locally and globally.

The day-to-day operations of the business will continue as before, under a new executive team who bring a wealth of experience and insights to the business, and will add to Cannon’s already robust investment process.

The incoming CEO is Simpiwe Mayekiso, Tshepo Modiba takes over as Chief Investment Officer, while Deshan Naidoo will assume the role of Chairman.

Mayekiso is an experienced asset management and private equity professional, with over 20 years of experience.

His career spans a variety of sectors, managing multi-billion-rand portfolios and funds. He has extensive capability across listed and unlisted equity investments, and has represented private equity funds on various boards, to drive strategy of investee companies.

His experience also includes entrepreneurial ventures in his personal capacity, in the mining and manufacturing sectors.

Modiba has over 13 years’ experience as an investment professional, three of them at Cannon where he was a Senior Investment Manager responsible for the Cannon Global Equity, Global Best Ideas, Global Diversified, Global High Yield and Global Opportunities funds as well as heading up Portfolio Construction.

Modiba co-founded Seriti in 2013 where he was a director, CIO, portfolio manager of the Seriti Global Equity Portfolio and custodian of the investment process.

More recently, he co-founded Seriti Advisory, a strategic advisory and capital structuring company.

Naidoo has nine years’ senior management experience in manufacturing and finance.

He is the managing director of Aventure Capital, a boutique management consultancy and investment holding company, which he founded in 2014.

Naidoo also knows Cannon well, having been an Associate Investment Manager with the company in 2012-2013. 

“There is a natural fit between the business and the team. At Cannon, our motto is Rigour, Resilience and Results. We question absolutely everything. Cannon will continue to focus on managing its clients’ assets according to their mandates, be it wealth that needs to be prudently managed to generate a monthly income, through to patient capital that has a longer-term growth objective,” commented Modiba.