Royal Bafokeng Holdings (RBH) might take a stake of as much as R10 billion in one of the country’s big banks over the next few years, chief executive Niall Carroll said yesterday.
“We would like to have a significant investment in financial services and it’s possibly a R5bn to R10bn stake in one of the big five financial services groups,” Carroll said.
As head of RBH, Carroll, a former investment banker, manages the commercial assets of the Royal Bafokeng nation, a community that owns 1 200km2 in one of the world’s biggest platinum deposits.
Carroll is looking to diversify some of the community’s assets away from mining and into financial services.
A deal with one of South Africa’s top five banks – Standard Bank, FirstRand, Absa, Nedbank or Investec – would help do that, he said.
Acquiring the stake would be a “medium-term objective”, Carroll said, adding it could build up its holding over time.
“Maybe we could do some now, maybe we could do some later, and that typically has been the strategy that we’ve followed.”
He hopes banks increase their minimum requirements for black ownership, which is currently about 10 percent, compared with about 26 percent in the mining industry.
RBH this week listed one of its units, Royal Bafokeng Platinum, on the JSE. - Reuters