Liberty Holdings said on Thursday that it had deployed one of its executives to Nigeria to help the company bed down acquisitions in West Africa. The relocation of Samuel Ogbu, a former property executive at Liberty, underscores the importance of a hands-on approach when South African companies try to conclude deals in the rest of Africa.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Liberty results presentation on Thursday, Stanlib’s CEO and head of strategy for the Liberty group, Thabo Dloti, said doing an acquisition by simply travelling in and out of a country was not ideal. Mr Dloti said Mr Ogbu, who was born in Nigerian, was deployed to help Liberty understand the operating environment in Nigeria better as the company made moves to partner a local Nigerian company.

Mr Ogbu has been tasked with building relationships with stakeholders and understanding the regulatory operating environment. “We have a target in Nigeria and Ghana. We have moved beyond a short list,” Mr Dloti said following the release of Liberty’s interim results for the six months ended June. Liberty is looking to offer its life insurance offering in Nigeria and is looking to Ghana to expand its asset management franchise Stanlib. In Nigeria Liberty already has a health business. In Kenya the company already has an insurance business. In the six months to end-June Liberty posted a 31% rise in operating earnings to R1bn. Retail SA, which offers insurance and is the bulk contributor of earnings in the group, posted a 34% increase in earnings to R798m.
Steve Braudo, the head of Retail SA, said his division was starting a customer experience unit to ensure its customers had improved experiences with the company.
This unit was key to retention and acquiring more customers. Retail SA has 2.2-million customers. About 1.8-million are in the mass affluent segment and 400,000 in the emerging consumer market. Mr Braudo said his division would continue to roll out innovative products and continue to sharpen its distribution platforms. Mr Braudo said that in the mass affluent sector the company was gaining market share but would not chase growth in the emerging consumer sector as these customers were facing pressure. Explaining why the company was not aggressive in the emerging consumer sector, Liberty Holdings CEO Bruce Hemphill said careful thought had to be given to the risks of an increase in interest rates and their effect on this market. For now Liberty was focusing on quality rather than chasing growth in this segment. Stanlib posted a 22% rise in earnings to R270m, LibFin Markets posted a 45.5% fall in earnings to R54m while Liberty Properties posted a 32% fall in earnings to R17m. LibFin Investments reported a 20.1% decline to R656m and Liberty Health narrowed its loss by 45% to R26m. In the health unit Liberty is building scale and believes the division will be well positioned for growth in the future. Kagiso Asset Management investment analyst Justin Floor said Liberty continued “to increase market share, benefiting from strong operational momentum, new products and weaker performance from some other market players”. “Overall earnings growth was relatively weak, driven by strong underlying retail and asset management performances, offset by a weaker result in the shareholder investment portfolio on the balance sheet driven by weaker and more volatile markets,” Mr Floor said. Liberty’s shares ended down 2.9% at R119.