The Group’s investments have performed consistently well over the past 15 years, adding to the strength of the balance sheet. This has allowed KTI to make several acquisitions and to enter into joint arrangements with strong partners. During the past few years, KTI has substantially grown its balance sheet, enabling it to procure “on-balance-sheet” funding for investments in selected transactions. This marked a fundamental shift in the group’s philosophy in a move towards longer-term strategic investments. It became important to reposition the company from a brand perspective, to move away from the identification of the company with particular individuals and to create depth and leadership to carry the organisation into the future. This means mobilising the Group’s various businesses under one mother brand and maximising synergies between these businesses, particularly in the financial services sector. The new strategy is about learning how to “hunt as a pack” and being more nimble and agile to achieve a more solidified platform that will enable it to scale up.

Beyond BEE

The new strategy calls for positioning KTI beyond the BEE era and to ensure that the Group evolves into a sustainable and enduring institution – in other words, to achieve an institutionalisation of the Group that will position it as a blue chip in the future financial landscape.

Reflecting on its spread of fine assets in the industrial space and 15 years of experience in the financial services sector, it became evident that the Group had evolved into two distinct broad sectors: financial services and industrial.

Moving into the next growth phase – into the era of post-BEE – KTI is being transformed from a pre-eminent investment banking services and media group into a diversified financial services, industrial and resources group.

The current KTI portfolio of businesses has thus been restructured into two pillars, a financial services pillar and an industrial pillar.

The core business areas of the financial pillar will be investment banking services, life insurance and short-term insurance.

The industrial pillar, using the current portfolio of investments as a foundation, will focus on media and ICT, and services.

More sectors will be added in the future as the Group makes new investments in strategic areas in the economy. Already, an embryonic third pillar – resources – is in the making, with the Group beginning to invest in the mining of platinum and coal.

Values and ethos

The Kagiso Trust, a leading development institution created in 1983 by Archbishop Tutu, the late Dr Beyers Naudé and other clergy from the South African Council of Churches, is the founding and dominant shareholder of KTI.

The ethos of Kagiso Trust – its identification with the poorest of the poor and its commitment to the social and economic transformation of the country – is the strand of corporate DNA that runs through the KTI Group.

In its new strategic direction, KTI will not alter the underlying ethos and value system of the Group – indeed, it will serve to strengthen it – and ensure that it is carried through institutionally into the era beyond BEE.

KTI remains committed to the principled investment code of not investing in businesses that are harmful to people and the environment. The Group will not, for example, invest in businesses that involve gambling, alcohol, micro-lending and armaments.