Morningstar Investment Management South Africa celebrates continued growth with new hire

Sean Neethling, Portfolio Manager at Morningstar Investment Management South Africa

Morningstar Investment Management South Africa has welcomed its newest team member, Sean Neethling. Neethling has been appointed as Portfolio Manager and will look after Morningstar South Africa’s local portfolios, as the business celebrates continued growth.

“Over the past seven years, our business has grown from strength to strength, with Morningstar Investment Management South Africa more than doubling its assets under management over the past 18 months. I am proud to be able to increase and expand our investment team and capability in line with this growth. At our core, we aim to empower investor success and in growing the team we continue to do so,” said Victoria Reuvers, Managing Director of Morningstar Investment Management South Africa.

“When Morningstar Investment Management South Africa was launched in 2015, we were a small team of about four, today we employ 13 employees (with more hires on the cards soon) and assets under management of over R21 billion (as at end May 2021),” Reuvers added.

In his role as Portfolio Manager at Morningstar Investment Management South Africa, Sean Neethling will be responsible for Morningstar South Africa’s domestic portfolios. While based in the Cape Town office, Neethling is part of the Global Investment team and will be responsible for bringing best practice investment ideas to the South African business and its clients.

According to Dan Kemp, Morningstar Investment Management’s Chief Investment Officer for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Neethling joins an established Investment team in South Africa and will be working closely with them to continue building portfolios that deliver great investment outcomes for Morningstar’s clients and investors.

“I’m delighted to welcome Sean into our global Investment team. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge, experience and a clear alignment to our mission of empowering investor success in South Africa. Sean joins a team that now numbers nearly 100 people focused on delivering strong risk adjusted returns and I’m confident that he will have a great impact on the investors we serve,” Kemp added.

Neethling began his career at the FirstRand Group in 2003 where he was responsible for credit research on unlisted companies. In 2008, he moved to a specialised lending and leveraged finance division within the group. In 2011 he was contracted to the investment management business of ABSA Wealth where he was responsible for the structuring of private debt transactions.

Neethling joined Regarding Capital Management in 2012 as a credit analyst and portfolio manager with a focus on researching global fixed income. In 2016 he worked as an investment analyst at Sanlam Investment Management before co-founding Perspective Investment Management in 2017 where he served as an executive director and fund manager.

He joins Morningstar after spending the last year working with the University of Cape Town on managing Impact and Private Equity investments across the Health Sciences, Biotechnology and Education sectors.

Neethling has over 15 years of experience in the financial services industry. He holds undergraduate degrees in Economics and Information Systems as well as postgraduate Finance Honours and Masters’ degrees from UCT. He is currently a PhD candidate at UCT researching fundamental investment strategies across global bond and equity markets.

The Morningstar Investment Management group, through its investment advisory units, creates investment solutions that combine award-winning research and global resources with proprietary Morningstar data. The Morningstar Investment Management group provides comprehensive retirement, investment advisory, and portfolio management services for financial institutions, plan sponsors and advisers around the world.