Fund managers must also know the score

21 August 2014 - 02:01 By David Isaacson
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There are many names on the honours board in The George, the old boys club at Kimberley Boys' High School.

But only two jumped out at me when I was there for a friend's 50th birthday party last year. One was cricketer Pat Symcox, who was still active in my day.

The other was Springbok Jack van der Schyff, who played his last Test more than a decade before I was even born.

He competed in the same era as legends such as Hennie Muller, Okey Geffin, Basil Kenyon, Ryk van Schoor and Tjol Lategan, but Van der Schyff was not remembered with the same affection.

The fullback missed what would have been the match-winning conversion in the first Test against the 1955 British Lions.

His failed attempt was immortalised in an iconic photograph.

The dejected Van der Schyff is hanging his head as the ball sails past the left upright, with scrumhalf Tommy Gentles, who had been holding the ball steady for the kicker, and the referee looking on.

The scoreboard is also visible in the background - British Isles 23, South Africa 22.

Van der Schyff, 27 at the time, was never forgiven and he never played for the Boks again.

That is how I knew him.

Van der Schyff undoubtedly suffered harsh retribution that would be way out of place in this day and age.

But I got to thinking about it in the context of the African Bank fiasco, wondering what punishment would be acceptable for the fund managers of Absa, Coronation and other institutions who were responsible for innocent investors losing money.

I am one of those victims, although my loss will hopefully be minimal, having taken out a Coronation retirement annuity (I was told that this was the wise thing to do) only at the beginning of the year.

But an old friend of mine had R10000 disappear from his Absa money market account faster than a David Copperfield magic trick. Others have lost even more.

Anyone can make a mistake, but, as I understand it, investing in African Bank was the result of downright stupidity and greed.

In horse-racing parlance, these fund managers were betting on a three-legged donkey and, to add insult to injury, they're now acting as if they didn't know.

For one thing, African Bank was in the business of providing unsecured loans, but apparently not even the sub-prime disaster of 2008 could quell greedy appetites.

Secondly, the African Bank alarms started sounding at least last year as David Shapiro, a columnist in this newspaper, recently recounted. These managers must have heard the sirens, but they conveniently turned a blind eye.

If any financial folk feel I'm giving their industry an unfair shake, please excuse me - I'm just a simple boxing writer with an over-hyped RA fund.

And I want to know what come-uppance these buggers are facing!

Will some be fired? Will others be denied bonuses or penalised in their next salary cheques?

They deserve to face some kind of sanction; their actions are far worse than Van der Schyff's missed kick.

Poor Van der Schyff took flak for years after his bad kick and the constant criticism left him broken as a player.

He didn't deserve that, but certain fund managers might.

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