It seems odd that someone who had dedicated his life to dealing with capital would have any aversion to capital at a personal level but Thapelo Tsheole is that rarity. Graduating with a Master of Commerce in Financial Markets from Rhodes University in 2006, he was offered a job in South Africa along with his six fellow graduates.
However, he and another graduate from Lesotho declined such offers, preferring to return to their respective countries. In Tsheole’s particular case, he wanted to come back to this “wonderful country and contribute to its development.”
Had he decided otherwise, Tsheole would be earning a lot more than he is now at the Botswana Stock Exchange where, last month, he was promoted to the position of Deputy Chief Executive Officer.
“I derive a lot of pleasure from what I am doing than I do from what I am earning,” he says.
Part of what explains his extraordinary sense of patriotism is that he feels the need to give back to a country that gave him free education. Notably that free education was in the form of a Bachelor of Arts in Social Sciences (single major in economics) at the University of Botswana and the Rhodes masters that he obtained while an employee of the Bank of Botswana (BoB).
When government has stopped educating him, Tsheole has used his own money to develop himself academically, enrolling for a prestigious MBA programme with another South African university, the University of Cape Town. By his estimates, he spent about P380 000 of his own money, completing his studies last December. This was money well-spent because, as he says, UCT’s MBA is the best in Africa and its Graduate School of Business where he obtained it “is highly rated in the world.” Even before the graduation ceremony this year, this school is also raving about Tsheole’s promotion, giving his story pride of place in the latest edition of its newsletter.
What has become apparent at this point is that being Deputy CEO puts a lot on your plate that you can’t eat. Before the start of this interview at his second-floor office at BSE in Fairgrounds, Tsheole is feeling the pangs of hunger, having just come out of a long meeting that ate into his lunch hour. He wants to know how long the interview will last because he wants to dash off and grab something to eat himself. The visual aspect of the transition does not seem to have taken shape yet.
The title plate on the door of his office still carries his old position. He recognises the suggestion that he should get a bigger officer and desk for what it is (a joke) but hastens to explain that BSE’s funds wouldn’t allow such level of expenditure. While the door of his office identifies him as a Product Development Manager, Tsheole is now doing a lot more than manage the development of financial products.
“In this new position, I am now working very closely with the CEO,” he says referring to Hiran Mendis.
He then proceeds to dispel two misconceptions that a casual mind might connect the dots about with regard to his elevation. Beginning July 2011, Tsheole has had stints as Acting BSE CEO and one would assume that such assignment prepared him for his current post. In his words, such acting appointment “didn’t help much” and he cites the length of time as the reason. Secondly, it would seem almost certain that having acted as CEO before and having just been made Deputy CEO, Tsheole will definitely become the next CEO when Mendis’ contract ends. He counters the latter with, “that will not necessarily be the case because I still need to work hard and prove myself.”
Tsheole’s CV shows that he has indeed worked hard to be where he is today. Among his career achievements as the Product Development Manager are: leading the process of the BSE 2013 Strategic Plan Revision; introducing the first Exchanged Traded Funds (ETFs) in Botswana, the first in Africa outside South Africa and successfully promoting them to achieve market turnover of over P403 million; participating in increasing investor participation in the BSE from less than 3 percent to about 8 percent to 13 percent as at 2013; forming strategic alliances for BSE business development with I-Net Bridge, DirectFN, Bloomberg, Reuters, AbSA Capital, Nedbank Capital, and Geometric Progression CC; establishing a Botswana Bond Market forum composed of the stock exchange, BoB, Non-Banking Financial Institution Regulatory Authority, Botswana Public Officers’ Pension Fund, Asset Managers, primary dealers and other industry stakeholders; and spearheading the registration of Botswana Bond Market Association; formulating bond market conventions for Botswana, and Botswana Bond Indices for BSE; playing a key role in the introduction and authoring of BSE Annual Reports since 2007 as well as winning the Best Parastatal PWC Annual Report Award Competition and becoming runners-up in 2009/10; constructing six additional total return and free float indices for BSE; creating and maintaining a BSE Market database for usage in internal research; playing a key role in external revenue generation; and, establishing the BSE library.
BSE, we are reminded throughout the year, is one of the best performing stock exchanges in Africa. That however, does not explain why it is not on the most recent list of Africa’s top 10. Tsheole concedes the point and attributes such absence to two factors: BSE is operating within a small economy and is still at a development stage. The latter notwithstanding, he hastens to add that BSE’s growth has been very rapid, catching up with and in some cases overtaking other stock exchanges on the continent.
Personally, Tsheole has featured and continues to feature as a speaker at local and international financial markets conferences and other forums.
“I get a lot of calls from big organisations that want me to feature as a speaker,” he says.
One of the latest invitations is from Europe and one part of it says that the head of a major German bank would like to have a one-on-one meeting with him at an upcoming event.
More than being a big feather in his own cap, Tsheole says that these invitations are “a sign of recognition” of the BSE by people and institutions that matter.
His one other career achievement has been to introduce financial markets courses which BSE offers in partnership with Geometric Progression CC of South Africa. Not only do these courses improve market participants’ knowledge, they also generate a bit of money for the bourse. This coming week, BSE will be offering a course on the bond market to close the knowledge gap that has been noted. Tsheole says that participants at this training workshop will include stockbrokers, fund managers, financial analysts as well as employees from the treasury divisions of commercial banks.
Regionally, BSE is also making its mark, having facilitated a Southern African Development Community-sponsored ETF seminar for Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Namibia and Mauritius. In 1997, SADC established the Committee of SADC Stock Exchanges (CoSSE), a collective and co-operative body of the various stock exchanges in the region which has formal status under the SADC Finance and Investment Protocol.
BSE has also brought Tsheole into a close working relationship with the Botswana Parliament as well as the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning. When the latter begins the budgetary planning process, one of its very first ports of call is the BSE. In his previous role as Product Development Manager, Tsheole’s input with regard to capital markets was crucial to this process. BSE also has a relationship with Parliament’s Committee of Supply which deals with the estimates of expenditure for the coming financial year.
Tsheole is passionate and liberal with information when he talks about his BSE job. However, there are things he used to do in the past that he still unable to talk at length and enthusiastically about. After completing his UB degree in 2000, he joined the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) where he worked for five months as a “researcher (intelligency)” The very thing that term does is pique one’s curiosity but trying to drill him for a bit more information is a futile geological exercise. All Tsheole would say when asked what that job entailed was that he “provided research in terms of anything to do with DCEC’s mandate.” Not enough said but we sort of understand.
In no time he was at BoB which he joined as a settlement supervisor. In that role he oversaw the settlement of foreign currency and securities transactions relating to the bank’s investment activities as well as execution of foreign currency payments. Three years later, he was promoted to the position of money markets dealer which he held for four years before joining the BSE as Product Development Manager.
Seeking to make himself relevant outside the world of finance, Tsheole has also been an active member of the Botswana National youth Council (BNYC), becoming its chairperson in 2003 and 2004. The following year he got second position for the Botswana National Youth Service Award in the category of Leadership and Personal Development. That invites one question. Now and then there is a story in newspapers about financial mismanagement at BNYC, which development seems inconsonant with the Council’s history of having been led by financial gurus. The question is: during his stewardship and as a finance person, didn’t Tsheole put in place stringent internal controls that would make it extremely difficult for anyone to ever mismanage or pilfer the organisation’s funds?
In his defence, he says that during his time at the helm, he “put brakes on unnecessary expenditure and employed prudent financial management.” Part of the latter involved stopping certain projects in order to rationalise expenditure.
“My term was for three years but I was there for only one and a half years because I had to go to school. When I came back, I was no longer a young person,” says the now 38-year old man from Mochudi.
