Zenzo Lusengo: The Evolution of AMB was born and raised in Harare to a Zambian migrant father and Zimbabwean mother. I completed a Bachelor of Business Studies Honours degree at The University of Zimbabwe and got into banking by accident. A friend, Raymond Ndlovu, who worked in the Project Finance division of Standard Chartered Merchant Bank (SCMB) put my name forward as a trainee in corporate finance where I spent four years. In 1990 when Nelson Mandela was released, South Africa began to look quite attractive to me. Zimbabwe was a small economy with only about 60 listed entities and I had already interacted with most of the prominent ones. I therefore felt that it was time to move on and joined Standard Bank’s corporate finance division in Johannesburg in December 1992.
mistake - leaving a stable bank for an unknown entity. But I was 28 and viewed it as an entrepreneurial opportunity. It would be great if it worked and if didn’t, I would have at least learnt some valuable lessons in life.
Around 1993, the first Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) deals began to happen. Amongst these was the formation and listing of New Africa Investments Limited (NAIL). Based on the work that we did for them, in May 1995 NAIL approached a few members of Standard Bank’s corporate finance team with the idea of forming an investment bank for the new dispensation. This gave birth to Pleiade Investment Corporation (Pleaide). The company had a mere seven million rand start-up capital making it an incredibly risky move for me. My family and friends were concerned that I was making a
interested in investing in South Africa, and following extensive negotiations, DLJ acquired a 51% stake in the business which was thereafter renamed DLJ Pleiade. Things were going swimmingly and in 1994, when African Bank went into curatorship, NAIL and AMB were involved in rescuing it. As a part of the process, African Bank acquired a stake in our company thus giving us additional capital.
One of our first deals was acting as transaction advisors when an American company Southwestern Bell Corporation (SBC) decided to invest in MTN. Soon after the conclusion of the SBC transaction, we made contact with an American investment bank called Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) who were
we acquired towards the end of 1996. After obtaining our banking license we became known as DLJ African Merchant Bank and in 1997 our trajectory continued as we listed AMB Holdings on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). We grew very quickly boasting a staff complement of about 150 at our peak in 1998. AMB was the place to be, we worked hard and played hard. I recall one occasion when after a particularly successful year, we took some members of staff and their partners on a cruise off the east coast of SA. In 1998 there was a bull run in the financial services companies listed on the JSE and in one week AMB had a market value of a billion dollars. We had listed at R8 a share but by mid1998 we were trading at R83 per share. Fortunately for shareholders, there were lock in provisions that ensured that management could not cash in their shares. A year later in 1999, we did a rights offer at R30 per share and listed AMB Private Equity Partners which resulted in additional capital for our private equity investment activities. We had quickly moved from a simple advisory firm to a fully fledged investment bank involved in corporate finance, treasury & trading, private equity and structured finance.
“When African Merchant Bank was listed, we had to publish directors remuneration. So whenever I visited Zimbabwe, people would know whether it had been a good or bad year for me and ask what it was like being worth X million rand?!”
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With that capital injection, we now had more than the R50 million in primary capital that was required to obtain a banking licence, which
One downside of being a listed company was that the remuneration of directors was published and as