RenCap looking for "the best talent" in Africa
Renaissance Capital never rests: the Russian investment bank is busy recruiting people to strengthen its presence across Africa and to reach its ambition of having the most extensive footprint if any bank in the continent.
"We hire the best talent we can," says Clifford Sacks, who earlier this year left his position as head of African securities at Merrill Lynch to become CEO of RenCap SA and head of Pan-African equities and has been given carte blanche to recruit people. RenCap has since hired over 100 Africa-focused people and continues to add to that number.
One very recent high-profile hire is Warren Squires, former director at Barclays Capital in Hong Kong, who is returning to his native South Africa to be RenCap's COO for Africa, based in Johannesburg. Another is Charles Barlow, a South African, former managing director at UK investment bank Greenhill who now leads RenCap's M&A advisory business in new markets with a particular focus on Africa.
Since buying well-regarded local research company BJM Securities in May, RenCap has also beefed up the team, poaching mining analyst Ian Woodley from Stanlib Resources and luxury and tobacco analyst Rey Wium from Nedbank.
RenCap is also fast expanding well beyond the South African border, says Sacks, looking for people in its Lagos, Nairobi, Lusaka and Accra offices. "We do not like briefcase banking: we prefer to have people on the ground and use our own employees to do the research and execution," says Sacks. "We want strong local management." For the same reason there are no Russians on RenCap's Africa executive committee.
"It is never easy to find good people in developing markets," says Sacks, "but we have managed to attract a lot of top talent. It has been easier for us because our business model is appealing, we are fast-growing and people are intrigued and interested in our proposition." RenCap has poached relentlessly from both local and international rivals. "Mesh Pillay is joining us from Deutsche Bank and will be our head of ECM in South Africa. Just today a sales trader from a local rival joined our Nigeria office. We are still looking for analysts across Africa."
Sacks says the attraction is that "RenCap is fun to work for because we are an entrepreneurial frontier bank", but he admits there is more to it: "We are competitive payers: it is essential to offer good salaries if you want to attract the best."
According to Roland Nash, who has just been promoted to global strategist, RenCap could have 600 people in Africa within five years: "With the new hiring we will be expanding dramatically outside our traditional boundaries." The plan remains "to become the leading emerging markets investment bank." As Sacks points out, "in the Continent there are international banks that are not local and local banks that are not international. But we are local across Africa."
