Big shareholder, small step

Oh. A pretty small announcement, a little after the market closed here last evening. An announcement from Naspers that The Capital Group Companies (on behalf of their clients) had acquired a stake in Naspers of 5.017 percent of the company. Who? Who are they, The Capital Group Companies? It is a worldwide investment house, headquartered in the US, Los Angeles to be exact. Assets under management, according to their website were 1.25 trillion Dollars as at the end of 2013. I suspect that they did well in 2014 and that number has grown. I presume also that this investment will be inside the Capital Group Screened Emerging Markets Equity Fund, which is domiciled in Luxembourg (I think). The fund has a 3.3 percent weighting towards South Africa, it is relatively small by global standards and was founded only in August of 2011. 86 million Dollars of assets under management. 5 percent of Naspers is around 39 billion Rand. Simple calc suggests that this cannot be the fund that houses all of the Naspers stake, around 3.2 billion Dollars worth.


What is interesting is two things. This is a massive company holding over one and one quarter of a trillion Dollars worth of assets under management. They report to have more experienced and steady management than any other business of its kind, many funds have multiple managers with decades of experience. Decades, that is a long time. To take a stab at Naspers is certainly an endorsement. Then again, perhaps I have not been watching this as closely as everyone else, perhaps they have built their stake up over time.