Three careers in institutional asset management. One firm built on them.
MidSquare was founded in July 2023 by three former senior executives of Sanlam Investments. Between them: the chief executive's seat of one of Africa's largest asset managers, two decades of multi-manager portfolio construction, and the financial and operational leadership of investment businesses on three continents.
Nersan Naidoo
Nersan co-founded MidSquare in July 2023 after more than two decades of executive leadership in asset management. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Sanlam Investments from 2014 to 2023, a nine-year tenure in which the business became South Africa's largest empowered asset manager, achieved record net inflows, and concluded the acquisition of Absa Investments, the largest asset management transaction in South African history.
He championed the group's move into sustainable investing, including the joint venture with Dutch development bank FMO that created Climate Fund Managers, which he later chaired through the close of its US$960m Climate Investor One fund. His earlier career includes an executive directorship at Sanlam Multi-Manager International in London and a start at UBS Investment Bank.
Chairman of the Board at Old Mutual Investment Group, Old Mutual Investments, Old Mutual Alternative Investments and Futuregrowth Asset Management. Previously chairman of SA-H2 Fund Managers and Climate Fund Managers B.V.
CFA charterholder · BSc Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of KwaZulu-Natal · Postgraduate Diploma in Organisational Leadership, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford
Firm strategy and the conviction that digital assets deserve the same standards of governance and discipline as any institutional asset class.
Selwyn Pillay
Selwyn spent nineteen years at Sanlam Investments, where his career centred on applying institutional research, portfolio construction and risk management to asset classes the institutional world had not yet learned to hold.
He joined in 2004 through quantitative research and portfolio management, and as Deputy Chief Investment Officer of Blue Ink Investments, Sanlam's fund of hedge funds business, led its transition into a regulated era, converting more than thirty unregulated partnership structures into retail and qualified investor hedge funds under the new framework. He went on to serve as Chief Investment Officer and Chief Executive Officer of Sanlam Multi Manager, establishing it as a leading multi-manager, before leading business transformation, data and analytics for Sanlam Investments until 2023, where he digitalised the group's investment process.
Trained in actuarial science and quantitative finance, with a background in machine learning, he brings to digital assets the same standards he applied to hedge funds a decade earlier: rigorous research, disciplined construction, deliberate risk management, and a regulated structure investors can hold.
BSc Actuarial Science, University of KwaZulu-Natal · Postgraduate Diploma in Actuarial Science, University of Cape Town · Certificate in Quantitative Finance (CQF) · MIT IDSS, Data Science and Machine Learning
Leads research, portfolio construction and risk management, and the design of the investment process itself.
Reece Briesies
Reece is a chartered accountant who has run the financial and operational engine rooms of investment businesses on three continents. As Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Sanlam Investments from 2019 to 2023, he led the acquisition strategy that included Absa Investments, Climate Fund Managers, EasyEquities, Matrix and Catalyst, while the business became South Africa's largest empowered asset manager, while he simultaneously served as Chief Executive Officer of Satrix, South Africa's leading index-tracking manager.
Before that he was CFO/COO of Sanlam's international investments business and, earlier, COO/CFO of Atomos Wealth in the UK, where he helped build a start-up into a vertically integrated financial services group exited at more than US$300m, including the acquisition of Nucleus Financial, later listed on the London Stock Exchange. He has held non-executive directorships across investment businesses in South Africa, Ireland, the US, Australia, Mauritius and the Isle of Man.
Independent non-executive director of Old Mutual Wealth; SS&C Technologies (chair of the audit committee). Previously NED across Matrix, Catalyst, Curo, EasyEquities, SAMI (Ireland), Centre Asset Management (New York), Eight Investment Partners (Australia), Sustainable Capital (Mauritius) and Artisan (Isle of Man).
CA(SA) · BAcc and Honours in Accounting, Stellenbosch University · Advanced Management Program, Columbia Business School
Operations, finance and the control environment: custody, administration, and the disciplines on which institutional trust in a digital asset manager depends.