Dr Adrian Saville

Overview

Dr Adrian Saville is a South African economist and investor, founder of Cannon Asset Managers and chair of MeTTa Capital's investment committee. He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (cum laude), M. Com (cum laude), and a PhD (Economics) from the University of Natal, for which he was awarded the Economics Society of South Africa’s Founders Medal. He is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation laureate and a matriculant of Linacre College (Oxford). Dr Saville has completed programmes in investing and competitive strategy at New York’s Columbia University and Harvard Business School in Boston. In 1994, he formed an investment vehicle which became the forerunner to Cannon Asset Managers, which he founded in 1998. Today, he serves as Chief Executive at Cannon Asset Managers and holds a Professorship of Economics, Finance & Strategy at the Gordon Institute of Business Science. Dr Saville has extensive experience in the investing industry, having built and exited Cannon Asset Managers and run a global multi-asset fund. He consults widely on economics and strategy to a selection of blue-chip and growing firms in a range of industries, including digital banking, pharmaceuticals, and payments. He retains strong links to academia, teaching MBA classes at both GIBS and the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. In 2014, he won the CEEMAN Champions Teaching Award, recognizing his outstanding teaching achievements. In 2017, Bidvest Financial Services acquired Cannon Asset Managers. Dr Saville joined Genera Capital as an Investment Specialist in 2021, while continuing his role as a professor at GIBS. Dr Saville has looked after Cannon Asset Managers’ Deep Value Portfolio since 1998. That portfolio has grown initial capital by 39 times over 21 years, equal to a 19.8% per annum return, versus the market return of 14 times start money, equal to 13.9% per annum. In 2013, he launched the Hummingbird Fund, a concentrated mid-, small-, and micro-cap portfolio that has returned 4.5% per annum ahead of the market over six years. He has presented to global audiences in many destinations, including Botswana, Brazil, Chile, Estonia, France, Germany, Ghana, India, Japan, Kenya, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Rwanda, Singapore, the United Kingdom, the United States, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Investment Focus

• Focus on early-stage to late-stage investments in South Africa
• Interest in sectors such as technology, healthcare, financial services, consumer goods, energy, telecommunications, real estate, media, retail, manufacturing, agriculture, transport, logistics, education, and hospitality

Portfolio Companies