Heritage

The man at the centre of Britam, Acorn dispute

DANDE

Mr Edwin Dande, the managing partner and CEO of Cytonn Investments. ILLUSTRATION | STANSLAUS MANTHI |

For the last two weeks, Edwin Dande has been the man in the news. Perhaps for the wrong reasons.

Three weeks ago, his name hit the front pages when he, together with four other employees, left British American Asset Managers (BAAM), a Britam Group Holding company, to start their own investment fund outfit.

The transition was silent, only managing to attract attention of business columns in local dailies which celebrated their newly formed venture Cytonn Investments Management Ltd. Not any more.

The toasting was short-lived as Britam Group followed them up and filed a case against Cytonn and one of its multi- billion shilling real estate investors Acorn Group.

READ: Former Britam staff take Sh40bn real estate deal

Everyday he spends time reading the newspapers to see what is being said about his company and what he needs to respond to.

“This has to be it. This is what is going to be my life’s work going forward,” says the 38-year-old entrepreneur.

The court battles are on as former comrades square against each other.

Away from the corridors of justice, the old boy of Alliance High School still carries his name high, choosing instead to focus on the small baby on his lap— Cytonn.

Despite the rough start, Mr Dande is optimistic that Cytonn, a company focused on managing alternative investment products for high net worth individuals, institutions and diaspora market will be a good force to contend with when it comes to alternative investments like real estate and private equity.

“We are the only fund managers offering real estate investment. No one has it. Go and look around and ask,” says Mr Dande who is proud of the Sh40 billion real estate investment by Acorn Group, which he helped structure.

Acorn was among the investors Mr Dande’s group at BAAM brought on board.

“I met Edward Kirathe (Acorn CEO) by chance. BAAM had just structured a real estate investment at Wilson Airport— Lang’ata House — and we put it out in the dailies saying this was an investment by BAAM. Mr Kirathe saw it and contacted me because he wanted something similar,” recalls Mr Dande.

It was during a follow up meeting that the two would later bond and, in 2013, came up with a favourable proposal on their business engagement.

Mr Dande, who went to the US as a Green Card holder, used skills and expertise he had gathered at Wall Street, Lehman and Brothers and Bank of America Securities, which mainly focused on acquisition and transactions to book the first mouth-watering real estate investment deal for BAAM.

He says that he negotiated for a 25 per cent stake at Acorn Group in order to maintain visibility and security for BAAM investors. The stake also came with two board seats and committee membership.

A man who fought through two rejections to earn a place at the prestigious Wharton College, where he studied for an MBA in finance, Mr Dande is perhaps less scared of the troubles surrounding him at the moment.

At Wharton, his first admission application was rejected and on the second attempt he was placed on a waiting list. He then decided to put up a strong case before the admission team.

Mr Dande’s pursuit for MBA was ignited by a revelation that investment bankers made good money.

“My pastime job in the US was tax returns. I worked as an accountant with KPMG, but also filed tax returns for Kenyans living in the US,” he said.

It was while keeping with his side job that he noticed one of his clients, John Gachora, current group managing director of NIC Bank, was doing well.

According to Mr Dande, Mr Gachora earned 10 times more as an investment banker compared to what Mr Dande made as an accountant. The revelation reignited Mr Dande’s dream in finance.  He approached Mr Gachora, inquiring more about investment banking and its requirements.

“He told me that I could do it, but said it was the reserve of a clique of professionals that were hired from best business schools like Harvard and Columbia University.” 

Mr Dande graduated and joined Lehman and Brothers at Wall Street, the jungle of finance professionals. He had previously graduated from Monmouth University with a BSc in accounting. “I remember working 40 hours straight at Wall Street.”

He survived Wall Street and participated in more than $100 billion capital raising and transactions there.

He lived by the mantra that he was only as good as his last deal. But even with this, he tapped his energy from the support system the minorities in Wall Street forged and his mentors.

Mr Dande would later follow his Wall Street mentor, Michael Barry, to Bank of America Securities in New York, where he specialised in financial institutions.

In 2009, he returned home and took up the chief executive position at Baraka Africa fund. His interest in Baraka fund was purely for networking, more of a strategic move with eyes on the nerve centre.

He also knew that Baraka was the citadel of high net worth individuals. These included Benson Wairegi, CEO Britam and James Mwangi, CEO Equity Bank, among others.

Funds

These were individuals that he reckoned would offer him a breakthrough career — he says as much today.

Mr Dande had first met Mr Wairegi in the US a year before he moved to Kenya. They developed a rapport. But Baraka offered him an opportunity to sit face to face with Mr Wairegi and other board members as he went round raising funds.

Mr Dande says Mr Wairegi confessed that he was impressed and was convinced that he, Mr Dande, was a man he could work with. Mr Wairegi offered him a job at BAAM as the MD and CEO in 2011.  Dande was impressed with the position and thought he would stay for long at BAAM.

But in 12 months, Dande was uncomfortable with what he terms as realignment at work. “I became restless, but I could not leave before I could show what I did.”

He pushed on and in just three years, Dande and his team of professionals had managed to break even, raising the profile of BAAM.

A father of one, he says in financial services, “it’s normal for teams to leave together because it’s a practice, you can’t do it alone.” Dande feels this is the right age for him to be in this trade.