Includes bibliographical references. / The international syndication of venture capital investments has become an increasingly widespread phenomenon, but there is a lack of research which applies the already limited prior international research in this field1 to South Africa or other African countries. This research aims to begin that discussion, and take the first step in filling that gap of understanding. The main research questions addressed in this study: are local venture capital practitioners ready and willing to syndicate internationally, and what are the constraints to the formation of those transactions? The issues were examined by interviewing high level investment practitioners representing seven of the 21 nongovernmental VC firms belonging to the South African Venture Capital Associated (SAVCA). This data were influenced and shaped by other available sources of primary and secondary data. The results indicate that South African venture capital investors are ready and willing to syndicate internationally, however there are caveats to that broad statement which the ensuing analysis addresses. Additionally, it was found that there are significant and profound constraints to these transactions forming in South Africa. Those constraints are an unsupportive regulatory environment, negative perceptions by the international investor community of South Africa, small domestic deal sizes and the dearth of bankable ventures led by high quality management teams. Options for further research include a study of the attitudes of potential foreign VC professional partners to the option of syndication involving South African VC firms, and a more in depth investigation into the risks and constraints to South Africa-international syndication.

This study investigates whether significant differences exist between South African, Australian and United Kingdom mining corporations in terms of derivative usage. The study further investigates whether such differences or similarities are due to size differences, specific mining industry sector differences, or are as a result of specific derivatives being more prevalent in a particular region of the world.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-97). / The following research aims to collect and collate a set of data relating to characteristics of mutual funds within the South African Mutual Fund Industry, with a specific focus on expenses. In addition, this research aims to investigate certain relationships within the industry, again keeping a specific focus on expenses. The key data used in the analysis include South African Mutual Fund Total Expense Ratios, Net Asset Values and Annualised Returns as well as mean Total Expense Ratios for other countries. The research finds that there exists no relationship between fund performance and expenses within the South African Mutual Fund Industry and that South African mutual funds exhibit significantly higher expenses than those of developed nations.

Includes bibliographical references. / The aim of this paper is to investigate Shoprite’s decision to issue convertible bonds despite South African firms tending to favour traditional forms of debt or equity. The paper first revisits the theory on convertible debt to consider the possible reasons for why Shoprite elected to issue convertible debt, and then develops two models, the first to quantify Shoprite’s debt capacity and cost of debt, the second to value the convertible bond issue, and quantify the benefit, if any, that convertible bonds achieved as opposed to a straight debt or equity issue.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 76-79). / The aim of this study is to identify whether there is a difference in performance between shares meeting the Islamic investing criteria and the market in an emerging market context. The proxy for the Islamic market is the FTSE South Africa Islamic Index. The returns on this index are compared to three proxies for the market using single and multiple regression models: (1) the All Share Index on the JSE in a single factor regression (2) the Resources Index and Financial/Industrial Index in a two factor model (3) a four factor model developed by Carhart (1997) that accounts for size, growth and momentum in the market in addition to the All Share Index.

Includes bibliographical references (leaves [51] - 55). / The purpose of this study is to price options under jump diffusions using Fourier Transforms and obtain the implied volatility surface from these option prices.

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / This paper updates aspects of the original study done by Collinet in his 2001 UCT Masters Thesis “Characterising Persistence of Performance amongst South African General Equity Unit Trusts”, in which he tested performance persistence over the period 1980 to 1999. This updated study focuses on testing whether the performance of a unit trust fund in one period can be used to predict the performance of that unit trust fund in a subsequent period. The overall results of the updated study were comparable to the Collinet (2001) study, although in the Collinet study evidence of short-term performance persistence was found when holding periods of 6 months were tested. The results for the 1, 2 and 3 year holding periods tested were inconclusive and no evidence was found that performance persists over any of those holding periods...

Includes abstract. / Includes bibliographical references. / For several decades equity-based compensation has been used as a tool to align the incentives of company executives and employees with those of the company shareholders. For instance globally, during the 1990's, there was and explosion in the issuance of employee stock options. This served several purposes, namely - to motivate managers in the pursuit to increase company value and achieve long-term goals, as a retention tool for talented staff and also as a way for cash strapped young companies to reward employees without the need to divert cash from operating activities.The objective of this study is to examine the current long-term share-based incentive schemes used by JSE listed companies based on data from 50 large and mid cap companies. It aims to identify trends in terms of prevalent scheme types, average scheme size relative to issued share capital, settlement methods, valuation models used, construction of model inputs and the use of performance conditions.

This study argues that the financing options available to PPPs in the South African financial market are limited and only few traditional financing solutions, such as commercial bank debt, are available to project developers. While traditional financing solutions may provide an attractive and easy to obtain financing solution, they are not necessarily optimal, cheap or able to provide the best value for money (National Audit Office, 2001). This suggests that the South African financial market, which is so critical to the success of PPP projects, may in fact be hindering the development and efficiency of the market. The main research questions addressed in this study are: * what is a PPP and what does its typical structure look like; * what is the state of the South African PPP market including framework and number of projects procured; * what financing options and models are available to PPPs worldwide; and * what financing solutions have been employed on South African projects? In answering these questions, we particularly focus on the financing options available to PPPs. As part of this overview we discuss private sector and public sector solutions. Private sector solutions discussed include equity, debt and mezzanine finance. We give particularly focus to debt financing which tends to make up the majority of financing in a typical PPP. Public sector solutions include government contributions, guarantees as well as hybrid structures.

Includes bibliographical references. / Rather than following a normal distribution, share returns and market proxies have been shown to follow skewed distributions, with long tails in some cases. In this dissertation various robust estimation techniques are investigated in an attempt to minimise the influence that outliers may have on the estimation and to better estimate the input parameters for the Markowitz and Sharpe portfolio models. The main goal is to ascertain whether or not the input parameters determined, using the robust procedures, yield better results than the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) procedure.