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May our story motivate you in times of turmoil, and may Pallidus enable your business by creating opportunities to engage with like-minded people, therefore connecting people, connecting dreams, connecting industries and connecting capital.
Quite interestingly, some of South Africa’s most outstanding businesses were founded or flourished during times of adversity. These businesses were generally innovative and agile and had the support of key stakeholders during some part of their journey. As a young business, Pallidus is no different.
We embarked on our journey in early 2015 with limited capital, literally five clients and a dream. Our dream was ambitious – we wanted to build an investment banking firm where we could compete with the banks without being a bank – thereby allowing us to be agile and innovative. We believed we had some of the best technical skills in the corporate and structured finance space and wanted to use that as base to leverage from.
Today we have a diverse range of clients, the privilege to work with amazing people and the opportunity to regularly establish sustainable relationships, something we do not take for granted and truly value.
Key to Pallidus’ growth were some private funders who took a leap of faith and backed this young team, something for which we will forever be grateful. In addition to financial support, access to networks and opportunities (social capital) are critical to the success of a new business. A vital contribution to our company was that experienced business people provided a small outfit like us with opportunities based on our skills and not our brand. The impact of such support should never be underestimated.
Now, seven years later, due to the support of various stakeholders, Pallidus has established itself as an investment banking firm. Our purpose is to create sustainable value by enabling our clients to achieve their purpose. We see ourselves as a critical catalyst to help companies succeed over the long term. Our primary role is to “Connect Capital”. In other words, to enable businesses or business owners to access the right pockets of capital throughout the capital stack to enable them to achieve their purpose.
Pallidus has an amazingly talented team who (i) can access various pools of capital, (ii) connect such capital to corporates or clients in need of capital and (iii) integrate various technical disciplines, including general business, legal, regulatory, accounting, tax and common business sense whilst being able to also deal with the complexities of people.
We have categorised our investment banking strategy into three main categories:
1. Corporate finance advisory;
2. Management of third-party capital; and
3. The making of principle investments.
The management of third-party capital has become a key focus area of the business and we currently have over R3bn of assets under management. These are held through several vehicles which include a 12J venture capital fund, black private equity funds (Ascension and Palamo), and a permanent capital vehicle (Pallidus Alternative Investments). This gives us exposure to a variety of industries and fascinating businesses and people.
An area that we are very excited about is our debt business which gained momentum during Covid. Firstly, we have a private debt business which provides 6 to 36 months of funding to midsized corporates. During the last two years we have deployed over R650 million into various companies, therefore providing our clients with growth capital whilst delivering an attractive yield to some private investors. Secondly, we will also list a multi-issuer debt note programme on the Cape Town Stock Exchange within the next few months. This will give our clients direct access to institutional debt funding. Indeed an exciting time!
We are very proud and simultaneously humbled by Pallidus’ growth over the last seven years despite all the challenges around us, whether it be Covid, the challenging South African business environment, etc. We would not have been able to achieve this without the support of our clients, the contribution of all our business partners and a great team of employees.
