Reuters- South African investment bank and private equity group Brait increased full-year earnings by 10 percent, helped by a solid performance from the firm’s specialised funds unit, the company said on Monday.<\/p>\n
Brait, one of the biggest private equity players in South Africa, said headline earnings rose 10 percent to $45.7 million. In rand terms, headline earnings increased by 21 percent to 321.9 million rand.<\/p>\n
Brait’s specialised funds division, which manages third-party capital in the group’s hedge funds and investment from its own seed capital, increased profit from operations by 377 percent to $12.7 million.<\/p>\n
“The long term strategy we mapped out to focus on alternative asset classes and the financial services that support them is dovetailing very well with current market conditions,” Brait Chief Executive Officer Anthony Ball said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Profit from operations in the company’s private equity business dropped slightly to $35.3 million from $39.1 million.<\/p>\n