GROOM INVESTMENT CONSULTING CC
Investment Company in Cape Town

He established Groom Investment Consulting cc in February 1999 when he left Syfrets Private Bank where he had been the International Consultant for the Southern region for four years. He spent four years at Old Mutual where he subsequently became Production Manager of Old Mutual Unit Trusts responsible for business in the Boland region of the Western Cape. Thereafter he and his wife Margie spent 1990 touring the UK & Europe. On their return, Brian spent four years as broker consultant at Liberty Life in Cape Town. Margie Groom is responsible for finance and administration. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Cape Town, majoring in English and Psychology. Margie then went on to do a Higher Diploma in Education (Post-Graduate) for Primary Education, also at the University of Cape Town. After a short teaching career, Margie did a Post-graduate Secretarial Certificate at the Cape Technikon, whereafter she spent three years in the Corporate Executive Services division at the Old Mutual. She was appointed as office manager at MAST before resigning to spend a year overseas. Upon her return, she joined The Leisure Corporation where she worked as PA to the managing director for seven years before resigning to have her second child. Consultants: A team of experienced consultants are available to provide specialised investment and financial planning advice to our clients. We compile and manage offshore and South African investment portfolios. We combine funds in such a way that they reduce volatility and enhance performance. We tailor our service agreements to suit the individual investor’s specific needs. We also offer retirement and estate planning as well as the full range of risk cover. It’s been almost five years since independent investment advisors started their appeal to Allan Gray to extend their investment offering into the global mixed asset or Global Balanced Fund sphere. We also felt that we needed another high quality Balanced Fund offering to bring to our clients. An offering which would not only do well while equity markets were on the up, which both Allan Gray and Orbis funds achieve handsomely, but one which would also protect our clients’ capital from falling too much while equity markets were moving downwards. This week Orbis is launching their Global Balanced Fund to advisors at the various centres around the country as part of the annual Allan Gray roadshow. It certainly looks as though they have applied the same sort of rigorous analysis of the Global Balanced Fund space as we have come to expect of them whenever they embark on something new. Orbis have not looked outside of their own team of professionals for bond expertise. They have looked clearly at this asset class and have realised that when a stock is undervalued, that firm is also normally undervalued on the debt side of the balanced sheet. This has allowed them to apply their current expertise, with some adjustments, to this additional asset class and to therefore be able to include bonds in this new fund. As equity markets have now experienced almost 5 1/2 years of growth, the likelhood of a downturn increases. This could therefore lead to a mixed asset fund such as this becoming extremely popular in the coming weeks.