Cytonn CEO on 2017 and what next for the firm in new year

How has Cytonn managed to stay above macro-economic difficulties that have emerged this year?

The operating environment has been somewhat tough but Cytonn has managed to stay above these difficulties by anticipating the challenges and pricing in the risk well in advance, while also taking advantage of opportunities that arose.

What are some of these opportunities?

Our investments team took advantage of the anticipated decline in performance of the banking sector stocks following the enactment of the Banking (Amendment) Act, 2015 in September 2016 and bought up select fundamentally good stocks from the market at low prices.

As banks hurried to cut costs anticipating declines in interest income, by carrying out staff lay-offs, we went into the market to pick up the best talent that joined our high net-worth distribution network, in order to meet our fund collection and real estate project sales targets for the year.

What has the business environment been like for Cytonn in 2017? The ups and downs throughout the year.

As mentioned above, the business environment in 2017 has been quite challenging and as a firm, we have had our ups and downs:

Ups:

In private equity, we managed to secure a significant deal in January, which is the 25 per cent stake acquisition in a leading real estate development firm, Superior Homes Kenya Ltd.