Remgro / Invenfin ecosystem

Chairman of Remgro and chairman of Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA and Reinet Investments Manager SA. Founded Rand Merchant Bank in 1979 and joined the Rembrandt Group in 1985; chairs the Investment Committee and the Remuneration and Nomination Committee.

Known as Carel, appointed alternate executive director in April 2024 with responsibility for Remgro's investment activities; alternate member of the Investment Committee.

Known as Sonja, a co-founder of the woman-led investment firm Identity Partners with nearly three decades of M&A and private equity experience; chairs Remgro's Audit and Risk Committee.

Known as Anton, a non-executive director of Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA and partner of Compagnie Financiere Rupert, with insight into tech start-ups, digital marketing and web-based commerce; sits on the advisory board of Asia Partners Fund LP I.

Known as Gideon, founder and managing partner of Southern Right Capital and a CFA charterholder; member of Remgro's Audit and Risk and Investment Committees and chair of the Valuation Committee.

Known as Dillie, a Chartered Accountant and director of Compagnie Financiere Richemont SA, Pension Insurance Corporation Group and Reinet Investments Manager SA; joined the Rembrandt Group in 1990 and sits on the Investment Committee.

Known as Jan, Head of New Investments and Venture Capital at Remgro and chairman of Invenfin, the group's venture capital division; oversees the group's Southeast Asia and China investments including the Asia Partners and Milestone China funds.

Known as Christine, a Chartered Accountant and former CFO of AngloGold Ashanti and Sasol; currently a non-executive director of Vodafone Plc, Discovery Limited and Clicks Group Limited.

Known as Lelo, founder of Ata Capital and a former Head of Debt Capital Markets at Deutsche Bank Johannesburg; member of Remgro's Audit and Risk, Investment and Social and Ethics Committees.

Known as Lwanda, Remgro's Investor Relations and Investments Executive since 2020, focused on the Consumer Goods cluster; a Chartered Accountant with a background in M&A at Rand Merchant Bank.

Known as Luche, appointed Group Company Secretary in November 2024 after joining Remgro in 2016 as Head of Legal and Intellectual Property, with a background in FMCG legal roles.

Known as Mariza, an executive director of Remgro since 2016 responsible for compliance, operations and the corporate and social investment portfolio; member of the Social and Ethics Committee.

Known as Murphy, former CEO of Kagiso Media and National Director of PILO with a long career across activism, the public sector and business; chairs Remgro's Social and Ethics Committee.

Known as Neville, CFO of Remgro since April 2016 and previously the group's Head of Corporate Finance and CFO of VenFin; member of the Investment Committee.

Known as Jabu, a former Deputy Minister of Finance of South Africa and non-executive chairman of PPC Limited; member of Remgro's Remuneration and Nomination and Social and Ethics Committees.

Known as Paul, a former Investment Executive in the corporate finance division of Remgro Management Services with experience across various directorships; an alternate member to the Chairman on the Investment Committee.

Known as Pieter, a Chartered Accountant and Investment Executive who joined Remgro in 2001; focuses on the Consumer Goods cluster and is a member of the Management Board.

Known as Stuart, appointed Head of Corporate Finance in early 2025 after 12 years as CEO of Invenfin, Remgro's venture and growth capital arm; previously chaired Stellenbosch University's LaunchLab incubator.

Françoise Vial-Brocco was appointed Chair of the Board of Directors of Sofiouest after five years as an independent director. She has a background in financial markets and corporate governance, including roles at Euronext working mainly with SMEs, and has served on the boards of several listed and unlisted companies. She is also Senior Advisor to INTUITAE, an independent family office, and previously represented the French Family Office Association for the southern region for ten years.

Gert Sylvest moved from music into distributed collaboration systems, then from Accenture and Avanade digital-government consulting into the architecture of Denmark's open NemHandel/EasyTrade e-invoicing network and the first PEPPOL transport infrastructure. Original PEPPOL documents name him as author or editor of service-discovery specifications, giving unusually concrete support to his technical-leadership claims. With Christian Lanng and Mikkel Hippe Brun he turned that public-infrastructure experience into Tradeshift. As founding CTO he established the platform and engineering organization; later roles covered global network strategy and China, the Frontiers blockchain/AI/IoT incubator, network products, small-business and fintech products, interim product leadership and the HSBC-linked SemFi venture. Publicly attributable product themes include an API-first UBL platform, CloudScan machine learning, supplier-first network economics, collective-data AI, programmable invoices and embedded finance. His current work through Polyfolio focuses on agentic AI, sovereign cloud infrastructure and strategic advice, alongside IT University appointment governance and a European cloud-research advisory role. He served ten years on LanguageWire boards and two years on Hyperledger's governing board. Tradeshift's delayed IPO, repeated restructurings, losses, late Danish filing and 2026 exit from SemFi are retained as company context, not personalized findings. No major Tradeshift customer-data breach or security misconduct by Sylvest was found; the company reported patching Log4Shell without evidence of exploitation. No named personal angel deal, personal Tradeshift liquidity event, LanguageWire transaction proceeds or realized return was verified. ETHERWARE is his disclosed holding and consulting company, but its underlying assets and any relationship to the Polyfolio brand are not public.

Jack David Waley-Cohen studied at Eton and read Experimental Psychology at Oxford, where he led the university quiz society. After two years analysing European utility debt at Deutsche Bank, he joined translation company Lingo24 as its fifth employee and Operations Director, overseeing operations, finance, IT and people as the business grew from five home-workers to more than 150 staff across four continents. In parallel he founded QuizQuizQuiz, turning a 2003 event into a long-running quiz-events and content business, and later co-founded Property Detective. Chris Sheldrick and Mohan Ganesalingam approached him in early 2013 for operating and language expertise after conceiving a word-based alternative to long coordinates. Waley-Cohen helped make early design and branding decisions, proposed or developed the memorable-word approach, contributed to word-list usability, became founding COO, and is a named co-inventor with Sheldrick and Ganesalingam on the core what3words patent family and a later AutoSuggest patent. Michael Dent separately documents being a fourth co-founder and first CTO, so the dossier preserves the four-founder record despite frequent three-founder shorthand. Waley-Cohen says his early remit spanned HR, finance, technology and sales; at scale his COO work became cross-functional coordination, international setup, legal and financial risk, facilities and leadership delegation. He remains an active UK director and German managing director, and became a Swiftcomplete director around the address-validation company's acquisition. what3words has achieved substantial automotive, delivery, emergency-service and language adoption, acquired Swiftcomplete, and reported more than 60 million app downloads and more than 1,000 paying SMEs in its 2026 campaign. Those are company outcomes, not his sole achievements. Truth-first context remains material: peer-reviewed and responder evidence identifies confusable-address and transmission risks in safety-critical use; critics object to proprietary control and legal enforcement against an open-source reimplementation; and 2024 accounts showed only about £2.1 million revenue, a £10.6 million pre-tax loss and reduced headcount before a 2026 blended crowdfunding round at a much lower valuation than the reported 2020 peak. No reviewed evidence makes those company issues personal misconduct by Waley-Cohen. Outside what3words he remains a visible quiz writer and editor, with television appearances, radio work and published Only Connect books. His public corporate record includes the family-linked Hereliving Investments Unlimited, classified as investment-trust activity, but no named underlying holding, personal angel deal, check-size mandate, investment exit or founder-liquidity event was verified.

Founder of RatnaTraya Capital.