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Reliance calls on Ken Costa to broker £35bn MTN deal
The Times has reported that Ken Costa, has been appointed by Reliance Communications, the second largest Indian mobile company, to advise on its negotiations with MTN, Africa’s largest wireless group.
The two companies are locked in exclusive talks that could create a new colossus in emerging mobile markets with a market value of more than £35 billion. More.
Anil appoints Lazard man to lead on MTN talks
Reliance Communications has appointed a veteran London banker and one-time anti-apartheid activist to lead its team of advisers on talks with South Africa’s MTN that could create a giant Indo-African telecommunications group.
Ken Costa, chairman of international business at Lazard, will lead Reliance’s negotiations with MTN, the two companies being locked in exclusive talks that could create a company with a market value of more than $68.7 billion.
Now a well-known city banker, Costa in his youth was the leader of the students’ council at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, then a centre for anti-apartheid activism, and spoke about his passion for justice in a recent interview.
The current chairman of MTN is 56-year-old Cyril Ramaphosa, a veteran of South Africa’s anti-apartheid struggle who resigned key positions in the government after losing the contest to be South African president to Thabo Mbeki in 1997.
Ramaphosa continues to be a member of the executive committee of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. More.
Some extracts from Lunch with the FT.
Ken Costa and I take in the pink marbled splendour of The Ritz Restaurant in London. The winter sun streams through the window behind us. In the distance, a pianist tinkles away at “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”. “So you bought this place?” I say. “My very good friends and clients did,” he says – his very good friends and investment banking clients being the Barclay twins, Sir David and Sir Frederick, who bought The Ritz in 1995. “I rather like supporting clients. I think it’s always useful, you know.”
…The restaurant is filling up now. Our starters are excellent. Costa keeps an eye on the new arrivals. Let us talk about your years as a student leader in South Africa, I say. “Ah, you jog me with nostalgia for those days,” he says. Costa was president of the students’ council at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, a hotbed of white student radicalism. “Being a young 20-year-old, I had a burning passion for justice, and the injustices of the apartheid system were horrible in every way, mostly because of the dehumanising effect – curiously, not only on the recipients but also on those who were meting it out. We, the students, became the vanguard of agitation against the government.”
They were exciting times, but frightening ones, too. “You’d hear knocks on the door from strange policemen.” Did that happen to him? “Yes.” Friends were locked up. One, Ahmed Timol, died after falling from a 10th floor window while under interrogation in Johannesburg’s notorious John Vorster Square. “There were some very brave and courageous people,” he says. His associates included Steve Biko, the black student leader, who also later died while in police detention. “He was the outstanding leader of our generation,” Costa says.
…Costa’s family, farmers of Lebanese origin, were not political. What turned him against apartheid? He boarded at an all-white Christian Brothers school in Pretoria. One day the students heard that a Chinese boy would be joining them, but he never turned up because the law did not allow it. “I was deeply offended by that,” he says. With this came the “realisation that we were an entirely privileged group of people and that we never had normal contact with black people”.
…Costa is, today, not just a Christian. He is chairman of Alpha International, an interdenominational programme that has spread around the world. More than 10 million people have attended Alpha’s relaxed meals and introductions to Christianity. What convinced him of Christianity’s rightness? He pauses to turn down a waiter’s offer of another drink. “Well, it was a case of being persuaded. Claims that were made by Jesus were, in fact, true.”
It is unusual in Britain to find people talking openly about religion. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s press spokesman, said: “We don’t do God.” Blair himself, who recently became a Catholic, said he never discussed his faith while in office because people would have considered him a “nutter”. Costa insists this is changing. “There is a greater openness than ever before for people to discuss the issues of religion. We do do God. We talk about it.”
Costa last year wrote a book called God at Work, examining workplace issues such as ambition, disappointment and money from a Christian point of view. As he talks, he draws on business terms. The Bible is “the prospectus”, as in, “That’s what the prospectus sets out, from Genesis to Apocalypse.” City work puts family life under stress, particularly when you are in the middle of a bid, but “it’s the trend that matters” – in other words, you can give your family more time when the deal is done.
…Is it true that he has read the Financial Times and the Bible every morning for over 30 years? It is true, he says, adding: “The only question is: which comes first?” And which does come first? The FT? “I know.” He gives a naughty giggle. “Awful.”
As the World Economic Forum gets underway in Davos, Ken Costa writes in The Times.
The banking crisis, politicial tensions and the threat of terrorism fuel international fear…
The annual gathering of Davos is always a stimulating way to start the new year, offering a chance to discern the critical trends lying ahead for the global economy. Beyond the eclectic seminars and high-visibility plenary sessions that frame the formal agenda for the meetings, it is always fascinating to find out what the underlying, and often unexpressed, key issues are.
Tellingly, the closing session of this year’s forum, to be led by Tony Blair, is on the unsettling, if prevailing, topic of: “Why are we afraid of the future?”
I am particularly looking forward to the debate on two topics that have been given high prominence this year: sovereign wealth funds; and the role of religion in the global economy.
Tony Blair will be spearheading a discussion on the implications for the global economy of religion and faith communities in the world. It will need his skills to steer the discussion on faith and modernisation, something that is never easy when the debates are theological and not economic.
Will faith-based societies be a restriction or an advantage in developing the global economy? As the corporate landscape changes, and companies become more involved in the communities of the developing world, new corporations will emerge in strongly religious societies. So the debate on the relationship between the business community and the faith-based world can only intensify.
Davos is ahead of the curve by giving this debate the prominence it deserves. Many institutions lack the basic tools for undertaking co-operation, dialogue and effective decision-making in the context of intensely held religious views. Davos could help in creating such a model and so helping to diffuse one of the most serious fears for the future.
Following his departure from UBS and on gardening leave until he starts with Lazard, Ken Costa has been in South Africa, where he was interviewed by Business Day.
‘Costa is on gardening leave — not that you’d know it. The first day of the 57-year-old’s trip back to SA is peppered with work. As the man who earlier this month ended his three-decade career with Swiss investment bank UBS sits down in the coffee shop of Sandton’s Michelangelo hotel, a former colleague from UBS comes over and greets him…
On Black Economic Empowerment
“Social transformation is not linear. Economic transformation is not linear either. There are bumps in the road. Models have to be tried and tested and seen how they work and how they fulfil changing objectives. My own view is that, give or take some examples, phase one has been a remarkable success. How it morphs into stable, sustainable, long-term investment is, of course, the question of the day.”
On Subprime Lending
How, then, does a Christian banker view the excesses that are now apparent in the collapse of the US subprime lending market, where greed led bankers to lend money to people who could not afford it and greed led people to borrow money that they had no hope of repaying?
“The markets overreact. It is the nature of markets to do so. And irresponsibility, uncontrolled greed, or irrational exuberance — call it what you wish — take hold of markets and these have to be corrected. At the moment, we’re inundated with knowledge, but we are knowledge-long and wisdom-short. There is a premium on pursuing wisdom, but it doesn’t always work in the capital markets.”
Read more here.
September 6, 2007
Costa leaves UBS for Lazard
An article in the FT today announced the change of roles for Ken Costa.
‘Lazard, the independent investment bank, on Thursday strengthened its senior ranks by hiring Ken Costa from UBS as chairman of its international arm…
The hiring of Mr Costa comes a year after Lazard created a unified management structure for its European operations in a move designed to end the long-running rivalry between the bank’s London and Paris offices.
Mr Costa joined SG Warburg – now part of UBS – in 1976 and has spent his entire career at the bank. He is well known as a senior adviser with close links to a number of large British companies…
A committed Christian, he also recently wrote a book, God at Work, about reconciling religious belief with global capitalism…’
A friend of the family
Ken Costa likes to quote the Bible’s parable of talents, in which two servants who put their master’s money to work are rewarded, while the one who preserved the capital and took no risk is punished.
The 57-year-old investment banker has lived by the maxim, too, during a 30-year career as a rainmaker. After studying law and theology at Queen’s College, Cambridge, the South African-born banker joined SG Warburg in 1976 under its founder, the late Sir Siegmund Warburg…
More.
Lazard Press Release
In a press release Bruce Wasserstein, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lazard said, ‘Ken Costa embodies the special character of Lazard, I have known him for over 20 years as a banker of unusual talent, integrity and professionalism. With hiring Ken, we reinforce our strategy of servicing clients with the top talent around the world.’
Mr. Costa has been particularly involved in structuring cross-border mergers, acquisitions and divestitures. Mr. Costa also specialises in providing advice to family controlled companies, and has advised a number of Middle Eastern investment companies on acquisitions. He studied law and theology at Queens College, Cambridge.
Banking veteran Costa quits UBS for Lazard
Telegraph article on the move.
September 5, 2007
‘…Whatever happened to moral responsibility among the financial institutions? Do their employees have no conscience at all?
One robust answer to these questions came earlier this year with the publication of God at Work: Living Every Day with Purpose, by Ken Costa, the South Africa-born vice-chairman of UBS Investment Bank, and a 30-year City of London veteran.
It might seem surprising to see a seasoned dealmaker fromone of the world’s toughest professions trying to get a discussion going about God. There is not always a lot of evidence of benign intent in the banking sector…
But Mr Costa is not advocating a softhearted approach to business. He would not have survived at SG Warburg, SBC and now UBS had he ever done so. He reminds us that in the Bible’s parable of the talents (Luke 19: 11-27) it is the two servants who put the master’s money to work who are rewarded, while the one who preserved the capital and took no risk is punished. And he quotes the great Methodist John Wesley, who told his followers: “Gain all you can, without hurting either yourself or your neighbour.”
Mr Costa has written his book because he senses the need for a greater awareness of spirituality even in the heat of commercial battle. The world may be more efficient, but perhaps it is also “more efficiently unfair”. And the - now faltering - recent bull market has made him even more aware of the dangers of excess. “There seemed to be a headlong compassionless pursuit of financial reward without restraint,” he writes…
…at a time when scepticism per-sists about “do-gooding” ap-proa-ches to business, religious faith may offer an alternative values-based code of conduct. The credit crunch of 2007 suggests something other than a market triumphalist free-for-all is needed…
Could Christianity even prove a winning business strategy? The idea might provoke hollow laughter among many in business, even those who consider themselves Christians. Mr Costa, an evangelical Christian, is prepared to be mocked. “If the Christian faith is not relevant in the workplace it is not relevant at all,” he says…’
Read the full article here.
Comment from the FT’s live financial markets blog.
‘No bank…would survive the promised return of Christ.’ So says Ken Costa, the vice-chairman of investment banking at UBS, reports the FT’s people column…
In the book, he describes a moment of epiphany, struck by the looming facades of the Bank of England and the Swiss Bank Corporation…
“As an investment banker in the City of London, I have read the Financial Times and the Bible almost every day for the last 30 years.”
But which has generated the greater return?
FT Alphaville.
‘Investment bankers are not often thought to harbour religious beliefs, other than a desire to bow down before the altar of mammon. Ken Costa has set out to challenge that view by publishing a book called God at Work: Living every day with purpose.
In the slim volume, the vice-chairman of investment banking at UBS sets out deeply personal views on reconciling his faith with the City, where he has spent his entire working life.
Mr Costa, who was born and brought up in South Africa, writes that the apartheid regime initially turned him away from Christianity, but that his belief was revived while studying at Cambridge University in the 1970s. He joined SG Warburg in 1976 and embarked on a stellar career that saw him rise to the upper ranks of the investment bank.
But he retained a sense of perspective. In one passage, he describes being impressed by the looming facades of the Bank of England and Swiss Bank Corporation. “But then, in a flash, I saw the truth,” he writes. “No bank - Swiss Bank or the Bank of England - would survive the promised return of Christ. Strong as they appeared, their apparent security would be broken in an instant.”‘
In the People Column of the FT.
City stalwart explains the influence of evangelical Christianity on his everyday business life in his newly published book God at Work
The Times, Business, Monday 14th March 2007
Attempting to square God with Mammon is not the usual pastime of investment bankers, especially ones who earn hundreds of thousands of pounds a year and whose deal résumé includes the likes of Anglo American’s £12 billion takeover of De Beers.
Ken Costa knows this. And he realises that his new book, God at Work, which focuses on the relationship between the Christian faith and working life, could have him accused of hypocrisy.
“The reservations are deep,” says the chairman of investment banking for Europe, Middle East and Africa at UBS. “Who wants to put themselves out as a target to be sniped at?”
A charge of hypocrisy would not sit easily with the author, a native South African. It was the perception of falseness that prompted Mr Costa, who came of age in apartheid-era student politics, initially to reject Christianity, or at least the “warped” version of it offered by his country’s regime at that time.
But now, towards the end of his career, and as chairman of Alpha International, the evangelical Christian organisation, he is willing to take any flak that may be directed his way. “The answer is that it is another part of one’s faith. If there is good news, tell it.”
Read more here.
