Archive | Where We’ve Been This Week

Last week I attended an Investment Solutions presentation where Daniel Silke shared his views. Silke is a political analyst, author, futurist, and an excellent speaker. Silke covered many topics and subjects – but his views on BRICS bear second and third thought. At the end of last year I was not overly favourable of the [...]

I was briefly at Sun City this week for the annual PSG Konsult conference. A wide variety of topics were covered – but what appealed to the audience most were the matters of change and brand. Yes – mention was made of legislation and investing – however for many advisers – legislation already exists and [...]

For the past few years we have been inundated with health legislation and policies. Gap cover legislation is one that comes to mind and NHI is another. NHI seems to be going along its expensive but yet to be funded path; but it is the gap cover proposed legislation that has caused much comment and [...]

This week I attended the quarterly OMIGSA media briefing. Tom Plaistowe of OMIGSA Alternative Investments was one of the presenters. Plaistowe is an infrastructure fund manager and has much experience and insight into our world and our continent. In his presentation Plaistowe posed three questions – is what we do (infrastructure investing) good for our [...]

Big business – and small and medium business for that matter – has a great deal of power. They employ, provide goods and services and in many cases represent the face of SA in other countries. They also provide substantially to the coffers of political parties. But over the past few years as SA politics [...]

Yesterday I attended a presentation of the Ernst & Young Global Consumer Insurance Survey. The survey covered 24 000 customers in 7 global regions and 23 countries. Ernst & Young’s Global Insurance leader Shaun Crawford said that one of the reasons for the consumer focus was that insurance companies tended to benchmark themselves against each [...]

Last week – amid many other presentations – I attended the launch of BrightRock – a new player in the long term insurance industry. Life insurers’ confidence indicators have been fairly positive of late – but the question always remains is there room for another player in the local market. Speaking at the launch Schalk [...]

Last week I attended the MN Capital Retirement and Asset Fund conference. The issue of preservation was again raised and I suspect this could become a rather emotive topic. Much is made of our poor ability to fend for ourselves well enough in retirement – with the blame lying fairly at the lack of savings. [...]

Last week I attended the Discovery Invest media presentation where Investec’s Jeremy Gardiner commented that people are more optimistic – not only because we went on holiday at the end of the year and there are some small signs of better economic times, but also because we are just so sick of bad news. This [...]