South Africa Paper Fetes Orbis’ Gray
He’s a familiar figure in Bermuda. But Orbis investments founder Allan Gray is seen as something of an international corporate man of mystery — even in his native South Africa.
Low-key and unassuming, Mr. Gray eschews personal publicity. In his homeland he is best known for his Allan Gray Orbis Foundation, which is spearheading long-term educational and business initiatives aimed at ridding South Africa of the lingering vestiges of apartheid.
But recently South Africa’s largest weekly circulation newspaper discovered that not only is Mr. Gray for real, so is his committment to the social transformation of the country.
“At this year’s ‘Sunday Times’ Top 100 Companies awards ceremony, some people were surprised to discover that Allan Gray is flesh and blood”, said Marcia Klein in Johannesburg’s “Sunday Times”. “Everybody knows Allan Gray, the high-profile, high-performance investment management company. But until the ‘Sunday Times’ announced that Allan Gray was to receive the Top 100 Companies Lifetime Achiever award for 2010, many had not realised he was actually a person.
“The elusive man, who has lived in Bermuda for many years, keeps a very low profile. Gray believes in staying out of the limelight, letting the performance of his companies — he started Orbis Funds in Bermuda in 1990 following the success of Allan Gray Ltd, set up in the ’70s — and the family’s charitable foundations speak for themselves.”
On hand at the awards ceremony when the announcement was made, Mr. Gray characteristically used his moment in the spotlight to highlight his charitable work rather than his stellar career as one of South Africa’s most successful entrepreneurs.
The Harvard-educated MBA and South Africa’s first Chartered Financial Analyst, he worked for Fidelity Investments in Boston in the 1960s before returning to South Africa.
He set up Allan Gray Limited in Cape Town in 1974. That firm has since become one of the top-performing and largest privately owned investment management firms in South Africa, with over $37 billion of assets under management.
Mr. Gray left South Africa in 1987 to establish Orbis Investment Management Limited as a separate international investment firm for high-net worth individuals and institutional clients. The firm began operations in 1989 with offices in Bermuda and London. Since the 1990s, Mr. Gray and his son William Gray, Orbis’ president, have both lived in Bermuda, where the firm is headquartered and has more than 65 employees. Globally Orbis employs over 270 people including more than 65 investment professionals.
Over the course of the past 20 years, Orbis has grown from a small start-up firm with just $67 million in assets under management to one with more than $20 billion under management as of 2009 and a global presence in seven countries.
Mr. Gray via Orbis, continues to educate many Bermudians and their commitment to education is a dedication of esteemed order.