PE Opportunities – Adansonia Holdings Limited

Adansonia PE Opportunities Limited (“APEO”) is a Permanent Capital Investment vehicle that aims to generate above average investment returns from the investment opportunities its Directors introduce through their involvement with various investment structures and/or corporate networks.

About Adansonia
PE Opportunities LIMITED

The Company evaluates investment decisions with the aim to deliver a total USD portfolio return of at least 12,5% per annum above the annual change in the United States Consumer Price Index.

The Directors of APEO are Rudolf Pretorius, Brendon Jones, Brett Childs, James Henry and Adriaan van Wyk. The Directors sit on the boards and investment committees of a number of international Private Equity Funds and International Holding companies operating mainly in Africa and in diverse sectors including:

Agro - Processing
Logistics
Financial Services
Mining
Commodity Trading
FMCG
Software Development
Property Development

Through their day to day involvement on the Boards of these companies and their networks, the Directors are exposed to investment opportunities, which they pursue in a structured fashion via APEO.

These investment opportunities, generally take the following forms:

Commitments to regulated Private Equity Funds, generally with an African focus. In some cases co-investment rights can be negotiated, thereby avoiding management fees and carried interest

Direct investments into third party Private Equity Fund portfolio companies (some of whom may be listed), again avoiding management fees and carried interest charged to investors

Secondary investments into Private Equity Funds where an existing investor may need urgent liquidity, and the transaction is typically priced to take account of future carried interest and management fees

Growth and replacement capital to investment or corporate holding companies (some of whom may be listed) where the Directors have board representation or significant influence.

All investments by APEO are only executed with the expressed prior permission of the relevant target’s Board or Investment Committee to deal with potential conflicts of interest, if and when they exist.

Investment Committee Profiles

Rudolf Pretorius

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Rudolf Pretorius

Rudolf qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PWC in South Africa. After a short stint in London with PWC up to 1987, he joined Rand Merchant Bank Limited (“RMB”) in the Corporate Finance division, which included the bank’s Private Equity activities. In 1992, he was seconded to RMB Asset Management to assist with the take-over of the recently acquired asset management business of Momentum Life Limited. Here he gained valuable insight into the traditional asset management industry.

In 1993 RMB acquired a joint controlling interest in Aegis Insurance Limited, a broker aligned non-life insurer, where he was seconded to as Deputy Managing Director in 1994.

As RMB representative, Rudolf has been involved since the start in the development and growth of Outsurance as an active non-executive director. Outsurance is currently the dominant telephone/internet based personal lines insurer in South Africa.

In 1996, on his appointment to the executive committee of RMB, he was responsible for starting the first venture of the RMB group into the retail banking industry. RMB acquired First National Bank Limited in 1998, leading to the formation of the FirstRand Limited group. He was appointed to the FirstRand Limited’s executive committee taking responsibility for mortgage lending and private banking in the group. Board positions included First National

Bank, Aegis and Outsurance. Rudolf also served on the RMB Private Equity investment committee up to 1998.

After leaving the FirstRand group at the end of 1999, Rudolf formed Treacle Private Equity (“Treacle”) with two partners. Treacle Fund I raised ZAR 226 million in 2000, and Treacle Fund II raised ZAR 463 million in 2005. At Treacle, Rudolf has been involved in numerous investments and has served on the board of Sourcecode Technology Holdings Inc, Senwes Limited, ERP.com Limited and Securedata Holdings Limited.

Rudolf was the Treacle investment principal that led the investment into Sourcecode in the early2000’s when it was pre-revenue as a software developer. He was closely involved in Sourcecode’s International expansion; first into Singapore and then to the USA and its three rounds of fund raising in the USA, firstly with Azure Capital (US$5m) in 2004, then with FTV in 2007 (US$11m), and lastly with Francisco Partners in 2015 (US$151m).

Treacle Fund I achieved a realised annualised IRR after costs and fees of 34%, and Treacle Fund II achieved a realized annualised IRR after costs and fees of 16.7%.

Rudolf relocated to Mauritius in 2011. He presently serves inter alia on the boards/investment committees of:

Outsurance Insurance Company Limited in South Africa
Denham Capital’s African mining platform (Tremont Master Holdings) and its portfolio companies
Alphamin Resources Corporation, a listed TSX company

Brendon Jones

CEO

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Brendon Jones

CEO

Brendon was schooled at Durban High School in Durban, South Africa. He worked for Standard Bank for two years up to early 1997, where-after he headed for London. He acquired a broad range of investment banking focused consulting experience over a six year period in London working for JP Morgan Chase, West Landes Bank, Deutsche Bank, Citibank and Reuters.

After completing his MBA at the Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town in 2003, he headed for Thailand where he set up an entrepreneurial venture and then spent 2 years as an accounting and information technology business consultant at the Diethelm Group until October 2006.

Upon moving to Mauritius in November 2006, Brendon was appointed Managing Director, and later became a Shareholder, of Inter-Ocean Management Limited, a Mauritian Offshore Management Company licensed by the Financial Services Commission. He managed to return the business to profitability and grew the revenue base by 25% per annum up to 2012, in the process building up a valuable business network across a number of sub-Saharan countries. Inter- Ocean Management Limited was successfully sold to the Maitland Group, and rebranded Maitland (Mauritius) Limited in June 2012.

After completing his earn out at Maitland (Mauritius) Limited in 2014, Brendon, in partnership with Rudolf Pretorius and Zain Madarun formed Adansonia Holdings Limited. The group currently provides a number of value add solutions to a range of International Investment Funds, Corporate, Family Offices and High Net Worth clients from the United Kingdom, South Africa, Middle East, Australia, United States and South East Asia.

Brendon serves, inter alia, on the boards/investment committees of:

Denham Capital’s African mining platform (Tremont Master Holdings) and its portfolio companies
Alphamin Resources Corporation, a listed TSX company
BSI Steel Africa Limited
Adansonia PE Opportunities Limited

Brendon holds British citizenship and is married to Henda with 2 children.

James Henry

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James Henry

James was schooled at Redhill School in Morningside, Sandton, South Africa. He studied at Stellenbosch University and holds a B Comm Honours Financial Analysis qualification.

He worked for Trafigura, a large global commodities trader from 2013 to 2016, first in Johannesburg where he was exposed to energy trading in sub-Saharan Africa, and thereafter in Singapore, where he was a risk and market analyst for Trafigura dealing with mainly with the Far East and Australia.

In 2016, he joined a business owned by his family, Foxsky Holdings, a developer of retail and commercial properties in Rustenburg, Soweto and Sandton.

Brett Childs

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Brett Childs

Born in Zimbabwe, Brett qualified as a Chartered Accountant in South Africa where he lived for nine years. Brett spent fifteen years working in London, where he was involved in the development of Equitas, the vehicle set up by Lloyds of London to acquire distressed re-insurance contracts and was one of the first individuals to be approved by Lloyds of London to act as CFO to corporate capital providers in Lloyds of London.

After leaving the re-insurance industry in 1997 he helped build a successful venture capital business focused on the IT industry, with businesses in ten countries. Brett was responsible for treasury, group structuring, managing the relationship with investors and was project leader in listing assets on LSE and HEX (Finland), and selling assets in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, South Africa and Australia, after which he wound up the group, finally dissolving the BVI holding company in 2006.

Brett moved to Mauritius in 2001 where he currently resides. In 2005 Brett was appointed to the Board of Brait S.E. a company listed in Luxembourg and Johannesburg. He stepped down in 2011 but continues to chair the board of Brait Mauritius Limited, the Group’s investment holding company. Brett is currently CEO of Brainworks Capital, a diversified Mauritian holding company with a diversified asset portfolio including extensive property interests in Zimbabwe.

Brett also sits, in a non-executive capacity, on the board of a number of privately and publically owned companies and funds including entities regulated by the Bank of Mauritius, Financial Services Commission (British Virgin Islands), Malta Financial Services Authority, Financial Services Board (South Africa), Solicitors Regulatory Authority (UK) and Financial Services Commission (Mauritius).

He presently serves, inter alia, on the boards/investment committees of:

Brait Mauritius Limited
Novare Africa Fund PCC
RMB International (Mauritius) Limited
Tana Africa Capital Limited.

Brett invested in Inter-Ocean Management Limited (Mauritius), an offshore management company, in 2008 and built the company’s private equity administration offering. The company was sold to Maitland group in 2012

His passion is education and he co-founded a private school, Northfields International School, in the north of Mauritius 15 years ago. The school caters for kindergarten, preparatory and secondary scholars

Adriaan Van Wyk

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Adriaan Van Wyk

Based in Seattle, in the United States, Adriaan is co-founder of SourceCode Technology Holdings, Inc. – the developer of K2, a global leading software platform for Business Process Management and Application Development.

He and his co-founders grew K2 from a small South African start-up, to a global software company headquartered in Seattle, Washington. He was K2’s CEO from 1997 to 2017, having recently retired.

Adriaan recently established a new tech start-up, Jigsoft, which is developing software in the enterprise mobile application space which will make it easier for employees to execute tasks or interact with customers, suppliers and staff whilst on the move.

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About Adansonia
PE Opportunities LIMITED

Investment Committee Profiles

Rudolf Pretorius

Brendon Jones

James Henry

Brett Childs

Adriaan Van Wyk

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Latest Update

Archives

CONTACT US

Brendon Jones

Rudolf Pretorius

About Adansonia PE Opportunities LIMITED

Investment Committee Profiles

Rudolf Pretorius

Brendon Jones

James Henry

Brett Childs

Adriaan Van Wyk

View Investment Reports

Latest Update

Archives

CONTACT US

Brendon Jones

Rudolf Pretorius

About Adansonia
PE Opportunities LIMITED