Author: Kabelo Malepe

As South Africa’s private equity market matures, one question deserves more attention than it typically gets: does what happens after a deal closes matter as much as the deal itself? Simply put, yes, post-investment monitoring is no longer a compliance function sitting behind the transaction; it is where returns are made. For much of the past decade, this was easy to overlook. Research on global buyout deals entered in 2010 or later and exited by 2021 found that roughly two-thirds of total returns could be attributed to market multiple expansion and leverage, not operational improvement. Rising markets did much of…