Self-made South African billionaire Allan Gray and his family have given away to charity their entire controlling stake of the Allan Gray investment company and its offshore partner Orbis, BusinessDayLive reported.
Johannesburg, South Africa (11 January 2016) – It’s an unprecedented move for a South African investment company, according to Bloomberg.
This donation puts Gray in the company of U.S. philanthropists Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, who five years ago started Giving Pledge, which encourages billionaires to give the majority of their wealth to philanthropic causes, according to a CNBC report.
The richest black South African, Patrice Motsepe, chairman of African Rainbow Minerals Ltd., also promised some of his wealth to charity in 2013.
Gray’s donation ends more than 40 years of family control of Allan Gray and will see current equity value — estimated at billions of rand — going to the newly formed Allan and Gill Gray Foundation for philanthropic endeavours.
Dividends from the firm will be used exclusively for philanthropic purposes, Gray said in a newsletter to clients dated Dec. 31.
“The controlling interests (and almost all of the family’s interests) have already been transferred to the foundation,” Allan Gray chairman Ian Liddle said Thursday.
Gray, 78, is a self-made billionaire who got rich from his investments, according to Forbes, which ranks him as the seventh-richest South African.
Gray was born in the South African city of East London in 1938. His family migrated from Aberdeen, Scotland to the then Cape Colony town of Butterworth in the 1890s. His grandmother was the first female mayor in South Africa when she was elected mayor of Butterworth years later and had attended the University of Aberdeen. Gray stated that his grandmother played a large role in his future success by instilling a family focus on education.
After completing high school at Selborne College, he studied accounting at Rhodes University and went on to earn an MBA at Harvard Business School in 1965. Gray was known to be dyslexic.
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A South African citizen and resident of Hamilton, Bermuda, Gray is fiercely private, Forbes reported. He founded his investment management firm in Cape Town in 1973 and built it into the largest privately owned asset manager in South Africa, overseeing $40 billion in assets.
The company was South Africa’s fourth-largest money manager in 2014, according to a survey of retirement funds by Alexander Forbes Group Holdings Ltd., Bloomberg reported.
Gray earned his MBA from Harvard and spent eight years at Fidelity Fund Management in the U.S. before starting the company. In 1989 he launched another asset manager — Orbis Investment Management — in Bermuda, which managed $30 billion.
In 2005, Gray founded the Allan Gray Orbis Foundation with $130 million of his own funds providing fellowship grants to emerging business leaders. The foundation received 7 percent of the taxed profits of Allan Gray Ltd., Forbes reported.
The family will have no remaining economic interest in the firms, Allan Gray chairman Liddle said, according to BusinessDayLive.
Dividends from the asset management firm will be used for philanthropic purposes.
“If we continue to do a good job for our clients and retain their trust and confidence, we hope that the annual dividends will run to the hundreds of millions of rands,” Liddle said in a phone interview with Bloomberg. Gray “wants our businesses to continue to thrive and he thinks that this is a governance structure which will allow our businesses to continue to thrive.”
According to its charter, the foundation must devote all of the dividends it receives entirely to philanthropic purposes.
“We consider this both the right thing to do and a small but necessary contribution toward a society full of hope for all humanity,” Gray said.
Update: Allan Gray, the founder of the asset manager that carries his name and one of South Africa’s greatest philanthropists, sadly passed away from a heart attack on the 10th of November 2019 in Bermuda. He was 81 years old.
Sources: Business Day Live
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Great souls they are.
Hey, this is great. How does one get in touch with the philanthropy organisation? I am looking to setting up a charity and would appreciate corporate involvement. Can you help me with any details? Thanks
oh please! he created a charitable foundation. would love to read the articles of the foundation, but if they are anything like all the other millionaires and billionaires foundations, then its nothing more than a front to bypass taxes and still have full control and benefit.
Now, had he funded a few thousand small businesses, or eradicated poverty in just one village, then I would be impressed.
Laurinda – There’s a “naysayer” for every act of kindness. You have a very bleak outlook on life. My question to you is what have you done to earn the right to question this act? How have you given, not what you can afford like buying lunch for a homeless person to appease your own privileged guilt, but how have you really gone out of your way to help others? – Just asking the question.
Thank you so much. Hope the right people benefit from your generosity!
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Many blessings to all good hearted
people