So which fund managers spotted the VenFin opportunity?

One of the best performing shares on the JSE on Friday was VenFin, an investment holding company focusing on telecommunication, technology, media and financial and risk services. The reason for the extra interest was an offer by Vodafone, a UK telecoms company to buy VenFin shares for R47.25 each.

Vodafone were and are most interested VenFin's 15% economic interest in Vodacom Group as they would like to expand their current shareholding in Vodacom from 35% to 50%. At the start of business, the shares were trading at R27.55, and by the end of the day the share price had reached R46.75, a phenomenal windfall for investors.

Anticipating this acquisition would have required a sense of knowing where Vodafone would be likely to expand, and being one jump ahead of the group. A report on the Fin24 website says that the largest institutional investors were Sanlam with an investment of nearly 10% in VenFin.

So which unit trust fund managers positioned their portfolios for the sale of VenFin?

The fund with the single largest percentage holding in VenFin is the Coronation Top 20 Fund, managed by Hugo Nelson and Gavin Joubert. VenFin is the fund's fourth largest holding at 9.36% of the total portfolio. The fund's third largest holding, at 9.42% of the portfolio, is the Rembrandt Group. These investments have contributed to the kicking the Coronation Top 20 Fund into first place with a performance of 57.54% over the last 12 months. The fund's absolute investment in VenFin was R85,1 million at the end of September.

Fund manager Gavin Joubert said that the fund had held VenFin shares for a number of years. 'If you look back at our top ten investments three years ago, you will find VenFin, if you look back two years, it will be there,' he said.

'We have always liked VenFin because we believed Vodacom, which VenFin owned 15% of, was under-valued by the market. At an asset management company Coronation is the second largest institutional investor in the company.

'Furthermore, both VenFin and Rembrandt have always traded at a discount to their Net Asset Values, about 25% and 20% respectively. We refused to accept these historic NAVs and argued that VenFin had good quality investments, and that the value of the company was closer to R40 a share than the ruling price of R20 or so.

'However, none of us expected the true value of the assets to unlock in quite such a spectacular fashion,' said Joubert.

Other Coronation Funds with relatively high exposures to VenFin include the Coronation Financial Fund, with an exposure of 4.70%, the Coronation Industrial Fund (3.79%), the Coronation Optimum Growth Fund (4.21%) and the Coronation SA Capital Plus Fund with an exposure o 3%.

Despite the fact that Sanlam is the biggest institutional investors in VenFin, Sanlam Collective Investment into the company is patchy. The highest percentage exposure is the Sanlam Value Fund with an investment of 5.16%, followed by the Sanlam General Equity Fund with an investment of 4.52%. The Sanlam Balanced Fund has an investment o 3.8%.

Within the Nedbank range of unit trusts, the fund with the highest allocation to VenFin was the Nedbank Value Fund, (3.93%), managed by David Foord. Interestingly, the Foord Balanced and Equity Funds, also managed by David Foord, had investments of 2.25% and 2.14% respectively.

One of the smaller funds to have a large investment in the company was the Absa Select Equity Fund with an exposure of 4.98% at the end of September. With total assets of nearly R60 million, fund manager Sam Houlie would have captured a positve return for his fund.

The Allan Gray range of funds by and large missed the boat with the highest investment in VenFin coming from the Allan Gray Equity fund, with an investment of 1.17% of the fund.

However, the Allan Gray Equity Fund is so large, it has assets of over R10 billion, that the 1.17% is in fact the largest absolute rand collective investment in VenFin, with R116.9 million.

VenFin is not trading at the promised price of R47.25 as there is a time value of money, it is expected that the deal will take two or three months to be approved by shareholders and the Competitions Board.