Macquarie Securities’ James Burgess is new the chairman of the South African Securities Lending Association (SASLA), Global Investor/ISF can reveal.

Burgess will lead a ten person executive committee working closely with regulators and securities lending market participants in the country.

Set-up in 1989, SASLA’s goal is to promote the lending and borrowing of South African securities and safeguard the integrity of the industry at home and abroad.

Cape Town-based Burgess, who runs the treasury function for Macquarie Securities South Africa, takes over the SASLA chairmanship from Nedbank’s Michael Wright.

Wright will stay on as an executive member. 

More than twenty institutions make up South Africa’s securities lending market, including banks, insurance companies, pension funds, asset managers and service providers.

Stats from survey of South African lenders last year estimated that around ZAR 130bn ($8.5bn) worth of South African securities were on loan at any given time.

In July this year, South Africa’s stock exchange will shorten the settlement cycle for equities trades from five days to three.

Global Investor/ISF hosting its second South Africa Securities Finance Masterclass in Cape Town on 7th April.

Click here to register for the event.