Founder of South African Money Manager Allan Gray Dies
Allan Gray, Founder of South Africa Fund Manager, Dies at Age 81
(Bloomberg) -- Allan Gray, the billionaire founder of the Cape Town-based asset manager that bears his name and Bermuda-based Orbis Group, died on Sunday. He was 81.
“It is with deep sadness that we share the news,” the company said in an emailed statement on Monday. “He has earned his rest.”
A Harvard Business School graduate, he founded Allan Gray Investment Counsel in Cape Town in 1973 and served as chief executive officer for 15 years before starting Orbis in 1989. At the end of 2015, he transferred control of the business to the Allan & Gill Gray Foundation, with dividends used for philanthropic purposes.
Gray died of a heart attack, Johannesburg-based financial news service Moneyweb reported Monday.
Allan Gray has total assets of 544 billion rand ($37.3 billion), including mutual funds of about 290 billion rand, the company said in an email. Orbis oversees $36 billion, according to its website.
South Africa’s biggest fund managers include Investec Asset Management, which oversees the equivalent of $140 billion, and Old Mutual Investment Group, with about 660 billion rand under management. Coronation Fund Managers and Liberty Holdings Ltd.’s Stanlib each oversee more than 570 billion rand and Sanlam Investment Management over 400 billion rand, according to their websites and other publicly available information.
Gray, who was born in East London in South Africa’s Eastern Cape province, spent a number of years passing his responsibilities to others, “confident that the firms were in excellent hands,” Allan Gray said. He handed over leadership of Orbis to William Gray in 2000, resigned from the Allan Gray board in 2010, and stepped away from his remaining investment responsibilities in 2012, before officially retiring four years later.
--With assistance from John Viljoen.
To contact the reporters on this story: Vernon Wessels in Johannesburg at vwessels@bloomberg.net;Hilton Shone in Johannesburg at hshone@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alastair Reed at areed12@bloomberg.net, ;Stefania Bianchi at sbianchi10@bloomberg.net, Antony Sguazzin
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