I am a father to two future Springboks, a husband to an incredible woman, an ex-lawyer, and an endurance adventure junkie. But full-time, I am a highly motivated and authentic entrepreneur with integrity as a core value.

I grew up in a small town in the Free State, built my career in law, and walked away from it to join my closest friends and business partners to grow Jaltech.

More than a decade later, we have built one of South Africa’s most trusted alternative investment managers, with no external funding, and without ever compromising on our integrity.

Jaltech is a South African financial services business specialising in alternative investments. The business designs, structures, and manages innovative investment products that provide retail investors (and more recently institutional investors) with access to alternative investments.

All products are managed and administrated in-house, with compliance, governance, and investor outcomes at the core of every investment. Jaltech raises and deploys capital across two core verticals:

• Private Debt: We offer companies medium-term debt facilities to companies that do not have access to structured debt from traditional banks.
• Solar Funding: We offer companies a fully funded solar solutions.

My sense is that I was nominated for this award because not only did we build a successful business in one of the most difficult sectors of the market, we built it, and continue to build it, with the utmost integrity.

Building a business within the financial services industry requires integrity, trust, credibility, consistency, and transparency. All of which take years to build and seconds to lose.

From an achievement perspective, we built a business with no external funding into a regulated alternative investment manager which, over the years, has raised and deployed over R4 billion, received the support of over 2,500 investors, and now holds a solar portfolio that places us among the top three owners of small-scale solar systems in South Africa.

At its core, we have built a business that has access to significant capital and the infrastructure to deploy it at scale. To illustrate this, one of our recent achievements is raising and deploying approximately R1 billion during the last financial year across thousands of solar systems.

We did it without institutional backing, without compromising our values, and with complete integrity.

My vision is to remain in South Africa, raise my children through the King David School system, and continue building this business for the foreseeable future.

For the company, I hope that it will be the market leader within its verticals. We are not looking to be a jack of all trades. We want to be exceptional at a few things rather than average at many.

For South Africa, I am hopeful that good will triumph over evil, and that a strong coalition will see the country through these uncertain times. With the right people at the helm, this country will be one of the great African success stories. The foundations are there. What has been missing is leadership with integrity.

Recreational activities

Ultra endurance events: Over the years I have completed a number of Comrades Marathons, Ironman triathlon, a number of ultra trail runs, ultra adventure races, and various other events. Current focus is trail running.