No place like home

No place like home

by | Oct 9, 2012 | Industry Interest, Media, Media Coverage

10 October 2012 – Shaun Harris

Simon+Stockley (1)The mercurial Simon Stockley, probably best known as one of the founders of SA Home Loans, the first nonbank to take on the Big Four bank mortgage lenders, drifts between Durban and the Middle East. He’s currently in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he’s acting CEO of Deutsche Gulf Finance, a joint venture between Deutsche Bank and the Al Rajhi family. “They are a prominent Saudi family and founders of Al Rajhi Bank, the world’s biggest Islamic bank,” he says.

On his first tour of the Middle East after leaving SA Home Loans in 2005, Stockley was meant to stay for six months but it turned out to be two years. “I had a three-year noncompetition contract so I got banished to the desert.”

But as something of an expert in Islamic finance he initiated and placed the Gulf’s first Sharia-compliant mortgage securitisation programme. At SA Home Loans he was a pioneer in securitisation, whereby finance from the banks is cut out and assets like home loans are pooled together and sold directly to institutional investors in capital markets.

Though he doesn’t say it, he sounds like he’s had enough of Saudi Arabia and is looking forward to returning to SA. “I’m not entirely sure about my future plans. Having tried retirement/semiretirement twice, I have come to the painful realisation that I actually like working. So I’m not planning on retreating to my holiday home in Knysna just yet.”

Stockley says he’s still optimistic about the opportunities in the SA financial services industry. “Being pretty much unemployable, I seem always to be swimming against the stream; I’m 51 and I guess too old to change my ways, I’ll probably end up starting something up, again.” He says apart from missing the obvious things in SA, “the Sharks, braais, the weather, live music and the theatre – you don’t find that in Saudi – I miss the workforce. My experience managing South Africans over the years has shown that our positivity, energy and willingness to go the extra mile are virtually unmatched anywhere else in the world”.

Stockley enjoys good food and has dined at some of the finest restaurants in the world. He’s not finding that in Saudi. “There are the US chains and a lot of Lebanese food. Riyadh is completely dry and some restaurants are as decent as you can get without booze. The local cuisine is not up to much – rice, camel meat, stews – so I pass on that.”