Welcome everybody to our annual results. I'm going to kick off and then I'm going to get Nishlan, our CFO, to continue and then I'll come back and talk a little bit at the back end. We'll connect it to everybody. I need this I need my stuff on the screen. Thank you.
So I think if we look at the operating environment, it was quite a mixed operating environment. We had a lot of political uncertainty in both our core geographies, Brexit and the UK and in South Africa, we had a lot of volatility on the political front. I think that would have continued to affect both corporate and consumer confidence, both in the UK and in South Africa, I think we all know that from middle of December or 20th December, we had a change in leadership with to that a change in presidency and that would have helped to uplift confidence in South Africa. But that wouldn't really have affected the trading period that we were operating within. I think both we were probably lucky that the global backdrop was quite positive.
Think when I was at the World Economic Forum, they did emphasize it's the first time in many years that you had global synchronized growth. But still, we and our main operating business was in 2 geographies that were experiencing some volatility or some difficulty. I think if we look at the stock markets in our key geographies, the U. K. Stock market was marginally down and South African stock market is up about 6% year on year, very different to what you saw with the Dow, which was probably up almost 20% or just over 20%.
So not a perfect environment, but a manageable environment. I think if you look at our results, I think overall, we believe these are satisfactory performance. We had decent growth in our key earnings drivers and our recurring income base was particularly solid. We had good client activity both in the corporate and private client area, and we saw quite strong loan growth both in the UK and in South Africa relative to the environment we're operating in. I think a big feature of the results was the GBP 7,300,000,000 of net inflows achieved in both our Asset Management and Wealth businesses without taking our funds under management above the GBP 160,000,000,000 mark.
We have as a firm continued to invest in growth and position the firm for future growth. That means that we have to invest in our people in our infrastructure and in particular IT and there's lots of regulatory initiatives that we have to manage, which have been coming at us over the years. So it's important that we invest to remain competitive and relevant in our core markets. So that's just a brief introduction. I'm going to call on Nishlan and Samuj to take over for a while, and I'll see you just now.
To Greenwald. All right. Good morning, everyone, and a privilege to be on the stage with Stephen. Let's just go through some of the statutory performance numbers. Okay.
So if we look at our statutory performance, Operating profit is up 1.4% in the period, and I remind you this is statutory, so it includes both ongoing and the legacy performance for the period to £607,500,000 And as we go through the detail, we will unpack the various drivers of that. But if I had to summarize it, really positive impact from our underlying fundamental drivers such as average funds under management and activity levels, High impairments and I'll go through detail around that, mainly around our legacy book and a slight uptick in our cost base in the current period. You will note from this slide that our effective tax rate for the period is 9.6%, which is significantly lower than our sort of run average to tax rate. And that's mainly arising in South Africa, where we have closed out some matters and that closure results in a release of provisions that we no longer require. And Taking those two line items into account, our adjusted earnings per share is up 10.1% in the period to 53.2%.
And that is 4.1% on a currency neutral basis because the income statement did have a positive impact of the improving currency over this financial year. Dividends per share, we've proposed a total dividend for the year of 24p Which is 4.3% up on the prior year. And that's pretty much in line with the growth in the adjusted earnings over this period. I think the rest of the results I'll focus on ongoing and we'll summarize legacy a little later. If we just look at the business model, focusing on both the geographies and the various businesses, From a geographic perspective, the contribution over this last year, very similar to last year in terms of percentage contribution with South Africa contributing 58% and U.
K. And other contributing 42% to the results with U. K. Contributing 44% to In the prior year. From a UK perspective, the relatively flat performance For the combined businesses, which was up 1.2% in pounds and in South Africa, 3.3%, up in rand terms.
I think Stephen has given you some insight into the economic environment that we obviously faced for pretty much to 3 periods out of the 4 periods in this financial year. And you have got an improving trend looking ahead. From the businesses' perspective, the 3 businesses, Specialist Bank, Wealth and Investment and Asset Management, Overall contribution percentage to the results pretty again pretty similar to the prior year with the Wealth and Asset Management Businesses to Let's just have a quick look at some of the key drivers, and that will help us unpack the underlying operating profit numbers itself. 3rd party assets under management. Stephen mentioned the strong inflows over the period of about GBP 7,300,000,000 Closing at GBP 160,600,000,000 and that's 6.5% up on the current year and a positive impact obviously from an averaging perspective.
Our core loans and advances grew by 11.6% in the period, and that's really off Fairly good growth in both the private client and the corporate businesses across the geographies. Our customer accounts, That's our deposit base grew by 6.5 percent to GBP 31,000,000,000 and the ratio of customer accounts to deposit at around about 80% over the period. Now if we look at the components of operating income, firstly, operating income grew by 6.9% in the period to 2.4 to 43,000,000,000 and breaking that down into detail, net interest income grew by 11.7% in the period to GBP760,000,000 that's really driven by the underlying growth in the loan book. There were minor negative impacts to In South Africa due to the downgrades, which would have picked up some cost of funding. However, that was well offset by improvements in cost of funding in London.
Annuity fees grew by 14.2 percent to GBP 1,100,000,000 over the period. And again, that is an interplay in terms of the underlying positive momentum that we've seen from funds under management in both the asset management And the Wealth businesses. Other fees and operating income decreased by 15.7% to GBP 269,000,000 in the period. To That's really driven by the fact that there has been lower M and A Levels of income experienced in London. If you remember in the prior year, I think you had a lot of Brexit related activity.
To And we haven't seen the same level of volumes of activity in the current period. Investments and associate income is up by 14.3 percent to GBP 177,000,000 That's positively impacted by the to Associate income from IEP Group in the current period, which is up significantly over the prior year. To Again, there were slight negative movements on listed and unlisted equities, but overall that line up significantly in the period. Trading income was down by 19.4 percent to CHF 134,000,000 again driven by volumes and activity levels that were heightened in the prior year And that coming off in the current period. Steinhoff had an impact of about GBP 13,000,000 in these numbers overall.
If we look at the nature of the income, Still a healthy mix between capital light and capital intensive businesses with capital light revenue streams contributing 56% Off the group income and capital intensive 44%. Capital intensive is obviously driven by effectively your banking businesses, driving the lines of net interest investment and associate income in the period. If we have a look at the relationship between costs and revenue in the current period, our Cost income ratio did tick up a bit to 66.5%. Again, similar to what we had mentioned earlier and last year, There's continued investment in the platform, and there are certain costs that will come out because of movement of The head office and so forth and so on, but some of that noise is still effectively in these numbers. The operating costs up 8% over the period to SEK1.6 billion at the core really driven by investment in IT, digital platforms And headcount, which is associated with growth initiatives across the businesses.
Permanent employees stood at 9,444 over the period, up 4.6%, specifically in the Wealth and the Specialist Banking Impairments in the current period. Overall impairments, and that's a statutory number, is up £37,000,000 to £148,600,000 in the current period. And that has picked up the statutory credit loss ratio from 54 basis points to 61 basis points. If we had to separate out the impairments associated with the legacy book, which stood at £84,700,000 or to £30,000,000 higher than the prior year, our ongoing credit loss ratio stood at 26 basis points, So improving from 29 basis points over the prior period. So I think bringing the picture together from an ongoing perspective, overall, a relatively satisfactory performance.
Operating profit growing by 5.6 percent to GBP 701,000,000 really supported by the growth in net core loans and advances of 11.6 to percent to CHF24.8 billion and third party assets under management growth that we have spoken about earlier. Attributable earnings at a high rate of growth at 16.2% with a further benefit from the tax as noted earlier. Adjusted earnings per share effectively up 13.3% on an ongoing basis to 61.3p in the current period from 54.1p. If we had to just go through some of our financial targets, I think you do see a distinct difference between ongoing and statutory. And as the legacy book effectively works its way out, we will trend towards the ongoing number.
ROE with a target of between 12% 16% on a rolling 5 year period, sitting at 14.1 to On an ongoing basis, about 12.1 percent, so just at the fringe of the target on a statutory basis. The obvious difference between the two is the level of impairments that we have processed against the legacy book in the current year. Adjusted earnings per share growing by 13.3% on an ongoing basis and 10.1% on a statutory basis. And our cost to income ratio, as I've indicated, marginally up in the period at 66.5% or 66.9% on a statutory basis. Dividend cover is at 2.2x, so pretty much within our target.
You can see the overall trend in line of ROE, statutory improving over the period, Slightly down in the current period because of the higher levels of impairments on the legacy book. And that really driven by intended acceleration of exits against that particular book, with the legacy book closing at about 313,000,000 to £476,000,000 in the prior year. And as highlighted before, the gap between these two lines Is what we are dealing with in the short term. I think from a going forward perspective, to There are multiple levers to pull in terms of the focus on improving ROE overall, but you can't see the differential once we have dealt with the legacy. From a balance sheet perspective, overall, I think capital ratios are healthy And the combined leverage ratios sitting at above 7% and in fact 8.4% in London on a A fully loaded basis, and that's if you brought in all of the changes to the regulatory capital treatment and 7.1% in South Africa Supports well the underlying capital targets of greater than 10% in terms of the CET1 ratio with both The UK and South Africa sitting within all of the capital ranges.
Liquidity remained relatively high to In the period at GBP 12,800,000,000 and as I had mentioned advances as a percentage of customer deposits at 81 to And we have gone through some of the asset quality numbers as well. Seem to have raced through those numbers, so hopefully you manage to digest them. Stephen will obviously unpack the business drivers behind those just now. But before we get there, From the 1st April and maybe fortunately or unfortunately, the rules change again. So the rules for IFRS 9 comes into play from the 1st April, and we thought we'll give you a flavor of what to expect when those rules come into play.
We will issue a comprehensive pack with the annual report at the end of June. So from a PLC perspective, Impairments are expected to increase from and this is a balance sheet number from GBP 158,000,000 to GBP 264,000,000 in the period to In this changeover, and that's really driven by impairments on Stage 1 and Stage 2 assets In the current period and introducing scenarios to Stage 3 provisioning. So the ongoing book drives up impairments are up by £70,000,000 And in the legacy book, impairments are up by £57,000,000 Legacy book really affected or impacted by the increase in provisions associated with being able to bring in a forward looking view as well as Sort of a scenario planning aspect to the underlying provisioning. Impairments will drop Slightly by GBP 21,000,000 on balance sheet because there are certain reclassifications that take place on adoption of IFRS 9. The impact on capital and this is the impact on day 1 is a drop from 11% to 10.5%.
And the main drivers for that It's a 37 basis point impact of us reclassifying some of our subordinated debt, not to But all of the subordinated debt that we hold here in London to fair value in the current period, that will reverse over time to as you move through the life of the underlying instrument. Some of the assets that we've reclassified to fair value Has a 7 basis point impact. And from a transitional perspective, the ECL change or the expected credit loss introduction effectively reduce this capital by 3 basis points on day 1. And that takes us to a ratio of 10.5% If we effectively report the same balance sheet that we report on 31st March, but on an IFRS 9 basis. From an Investec Limited perspective or the South African perspective, overall balance sheet impairments are expected to increase from SEK 1,500,000,000 to SEK 2,200,000,000 by bringing in expected loss.
And that increase of SEK 811,000,000 Is introducing effectively a higher impairment numbers over our Stage 1 and Stage 2 book with a marginal increase on Stage 3. The reduction is again driven by reclassification of some financial assets that we cannot carry at amortized costs, and that's because Failed a test referred to as SPPI, so significant to sorry, a repayment of payment and interest. I shouldn't be talking technical, so I apologize. And that's really a reclassification on a balance sheet. It's to So no effect overall.
The CET1 ratio is marginally affected in South Africa from 10.2% to 10.0%, 16 basis points for designating assets at fair value and 4 basis points for the transitional impact of ECL. And that's really the impact of IFRS 9. And like I say, you will get more detail once we distribute the annual report. To hand over to Stephen to come back in for the business review.
To I think I'm live. Thanks, Nish. Better Nish talks the technical stuff than me. Right, can you hear me? Okay.
So if we look at the businesses, I think if we start off with Investec Asset Management, very positive momentum, funds under management from GBP 95,300,000,000 to GBP 103,900,000,000 GBP 103,900,000,000 that's an increase of 9% driven by strong inflows of £5,400,000,000 gives them a talk ratio of 5.6 percent and the positive impact of market and FX movements of £3,200,000,000 I I think operating profit followed on from that, up 8% from GBP 164,800,000,000 to GBP 178,000,000,000 and I think that's a record year of revenues, again, driven by increase in assets under management and strong net inflows. I think you remember at the half year, we did talk about performance fees in South Africa being a lot lower and that would have followed through for the full year. So notwithstanding the good growth in funds under management, we did have lower performance fees. South Africa's earnings, therefore, were a bit lower. I think as a consequence of that, the operating margin is down marginally from 33.1% to 33%.
So if you exclude performance fees, the operating margin would have increased. I think if you look at flows, and this is a strong feature of these results compared to last year, we had negative flows. This year, GBP 2,600,000,000 from the Americas, GBP GBP 1,400,000,000 from Asia Pacific, including the Middle East, GBP 1,000,000,000 from Europe and GBP 243,000,000 from Africa. Last year, we had stronger flows in Africa. So I think that from an outlook point of view, you can see that the strategy of developing the business in the large markets is working well for us and that we have very strong long term fundamentals and we believe that the industry, notwithstanding all the talk about passive and all that, still remain strong and that's reflected in these inflows.
So clearly, there are potential challenges to of market correction that's always out there for this type of business, growing regulatory scrutiny and technology advances and the need to justify value for money. That's what's very important in this industry going forward is that what you do delivers value for money to our clients. So we believe that we've built a sustainable competitive long term business committed to active, I emphasize the word active Investment Management. And we do have positive momentum. Obviously, Hendrik, who's run this business since 1991, he joined us in 1991.
He's handing over to John Green and Mimi Farini and he tells me yesterday that the transition is very smooth and the new leadership is in touch so that he can come into his new role on the 1st October effectively actually from June. On our Wealth and Investment business, operating profit up 5.7 percent to GBP 98,600,000 South Africa again down slightly, 2.1% in rand. That's partly because the increase in annuity fees was offset about lack of activity. If you're in South Africa from roundabout October, lots of things just died waiting for the outcome of the ANC Elective Conference in December and people were sitting on their hands and not doing anything or pretty nervous. So that would have impacted on this business.
And then they do have dollar revenue, which would have translated into less rands because of the appreciation of the rand. The UK, up 6.3%, very strong good net inflows, as we mentioned earlier, good growth in average funds under management and to higher market indices. So overall, we did see a drop off in the operating margin from 25.9 to percent to 24.3 percent, operating income up 12.3 percent, operating costs up 14.6%. That is as a consequence of investment in the business. We have launched a robo advisor called Click and Invest that's very well received buy the market, but there has been a lot of investment to get it up and running, both in digital IT and headcount across actually the business, put part of it in the Robo Advisor.
And then assets under management, as I said, up 2.3 percent to GBP 56 GBP 1,000,000,000 off the back of net inflows of GBP 2,000,000,000 I think if we look at the outlook for this business clearly in both geographies, South Africa maybe lesser than UK. You still got some uncertainty. But I think that our business platform is well in place and that we're well positioned for the future and we are continuing to invest in building this business. It has been organic over the last 2 years. It is always an area where you would look to make acquisitions, but nothing of relevance has come our way or if it has come our way, it's all very expensive.
So I think we have a very strong core business and we'll continue to invest in the future and drive this business forward. If we look at the Specialist Banking businesses, overall up 4.3% I'm dealing with ongoing. If you look at statutory, the number is a bit different because of the extra impairments. UK ongoing down 9.3%. I think Nishlan mentioned that there was less activity on the trading desk because we had a lot of activity in post Brexit with the volatility and less M and A activity in this particular period.
South Africa up 6.9% in rands, supported by reasonable activity across both private client and corporate and quite strong growth in our associate earnings from Investec used to be called Investec Equity Pardon, it's now called IP. Cost to income ratio up to 60.5% from just under 60%. Again, lots of investment in IT infrastructure and headcount as we try and grow our platforms. And then strong growth in core loans and advances, which Nishlan spoke about, more moderate growth in customer deposits as in particular in the UK, we're attempting to pull our cost of money down, which we were very successful at in this particular period. So UK and the international businesses ongoing, revenue was flat, 713, 713.
That was driven by strong net interest income of 16.3 percent with advisory fees and M and A activity drop down by 13.2%. Trading income also down for the reasons I mentioned earlier. I think costs we're more moderate in this year because we already have certain of the costs in our previous financial year. So we still got £10,000,000 of strategic investment in the private bank. And then we have still double premises, but the increase was moderate.
That will drop off in about 18 months' time. And then we will have we did have normalized cost growth of GBP 4.4 £1,000,000 so overall only up by about 2.8%. I think that the majority of the private bank's additional spend is now in the base and as is the double premises cost now in the base. So on the return side, I think we still need to work on getting our ROE up in this business. I think as you are building your platform, so you can drive your revenue growth.
There was obviously the political and economic uncertainty that would have impacted activity levels and that may still be the case. However, we have cleaned up. We have dealt with legacy. Nishlan gave you the numbers on legacy, both in this particular financial year end that we have completed the majority of the investment in the private bank. And as I said, the premises costs disappear the double.
So we get a clear runway to grow our business. And hopefully, we'll start seeing the right kind of ROE in this business going forward because it has a very solid platform. And then legacy, we wrote off last year £64,000,000 this year. We gave you details in the trading update. We were accelerating certain exits.
We started out at GBP 4,800,000,000 in 20.8, we're now down to GBP 313,000,000 and after the adjustment Nishtim spoke about for IFRS nine, we'll be down to GBP 257,000,000 So from here on out, we will not report legacy anymore. It will be re categorized into Stage 2 and Stage 3 under IFRS 9. So that will be the end of us reporting ongoing versus statutory. And that's a big burden out of our way. If I move to South Africa, I think you saw revenue increase from ZAR12.9 billion to ZAR13.5 billion, tough environment to grow revenue.
We did get book growth of 8.7%, but net interest income didn't really follow that to because of as Nishlan mentioned, we would have lost we would have had an increase in cost of money when we had the writing downgrade on some of our international fundraising activities. But overall, we managed to get decent revenue growth in a tough environment. I think clearly we've seen a big shift on the political front. There are still challenges, but moving into a much better space as the new presidency, tackle some of the big issues of corruption and inefficiencies of the state. But that is going to take quite a bit of time.
And then if you look at ROE, again, it was down slightly in this particular year, but we are targeting to improve that ROE as we move forward and optimize ROE, optimize our capital structure. So I think moving on to strategic priorities, I think if we look at asset management, again, core focus is on clients, performance, people and long term growth. I think we have seen a big improvement in investment performance. If we went back about 18 months, our investment performance in South Africa had been a bit weaker. I think that's come right.
We've maintained strong momentum in the adviser business globally. We are growing our presence in large markets, especially in North America. We continue to build scale in our multi asset quality capabilities and we want to see all our investment capabilities involved for the future and we are building have a foundation for alternatives. So again, it is a business where performance and clients are our top priority and that we have tried to build an intergenerational long term business. On Wealth, I think we've spoken about building long term sustainability.
Digitalization has been a key focus. Client service is always going to be a focus in this business, it's a people business and you will look after your clients. Making sure that we have a global investment offering is again important for certain types of clients who are not domestic or more international. And we are identifying opportunities and building skills in to investment via Juicery and Tex because that is very necessary for those type of clients. And then we have lots of efficiency initiatives, including new systems, particularly in our international business and our South African business that will come on stream over the next 2 years.
So again, focusing on the long term, while making sure we deliver in the short term. If we look at the U. K. Specialist Bank, I think we have spent a lot of time and effort trying to build out our franchises and deepen our client relationships. We've been spending also a lot of money on establishing a high-tech and high touch domestically relevant because relevance is very important to you, growth orientated business.
The Private Bank focus is now shifting from platform development to client acquisition and we're having a lot of success on that front, but it is a long game. And then always you have to improve coordination across these business units. More focus on capital light activities so that we can improve ROE and again focus on operational efficiencies so we can improve costs. If we look at South Africa, I think there's always trying to look for new sources of revenue. Liquidity is important to manage and building our retail funding initiatives will be important going forward.
Capital and managing and optimizing returns as we get our ROE up. And then as we've said 1,000 times, investment in technology and our infrastructure. I think one thing you may not be familiar with, although I think we've spoken about this before, is the launch of what we call Investec for Business that's designed to deliver an integrated service to the mid market corporates. It's something that we've never really done properly and well. We have a number of business units that we've merged into 1, including Investec Import Solutions, Raichman's in part of the corporate bank and we have big hopes for that business as another pillar in our banking offering between the corporate bank and the private bank.
And that we are moving very fast on that and hopefully within the next year or 2, you'll start seeing very good results from that area. So I think outlook for us was satisfactory operating performance. We had good growth in our key earnings drivers. We had solid client activity level and obviously, our recurring income base actually continued to grow. We still face the complexities of Brexit and how what kind of Brexit one ends up with in the UK.
The issue is not as much what does it do to our European businesses because they're small in the overall scheme of things and we have plans for that. It's more about what happens to the domestic economy from the uncertainty created. I think on South Africa, perhaps the opposite because we have a lot more clarity. There's still lots of political challenges, but at least we're starting to see the government tackle some of the big, big issues out there. We will continue to invest in infrastructure, our digital platforms and our people to make sure that we're well positioned for future growth.
So we as an organization remain committed to share the value. I think we have the right people and right skills to take advantage of opportunities in our core markets whilst at the same time maintaining and providing exceptional services to our clients. So what I'm going to talk about because this is the last year in which I will be presenting these results after I can't remember how long, but a long time since we are one of our previous Chairman, Bas Gaudal, said you can't just carry to running a public company without talking to the market. I think that was about 1988 was the first time we had an investor presentation. So I can't remember how many years that is.
It's like 30 years. But we've been building this business for 38 years. Bernardo now argue whether it's 40 or 38 years, but I'll say we've been a bank for 38 years. So almost to the day, I think we went on the plane to go and talk to the people who are selling K Trustees on the 17th May. I don't know what's the date today?
17th. So it is 38 years today, Ian, that we went on the plane to go and talk to the people from PayTrust. It is a coincidence, but I remember going on that plane to talk to those people. So I'm going to talk a little bit about our history. So please, I know I'm taking longer than normal for this, but it's our last shot at it.
This generation is a large shot of it. So I think from the outset, our aim was to build a sustainable business, building all areas of capital simultaneously, financial, client, human and social and environmental. And while we try to do this is to ensure that we have the resilience to support us through bearing cycles. So some of us have lived through 5 financial crises of various forms. I don't want to go into each and every one of them.
They all have been different. They all have brought different angles to how you manage and run your business. And each one of them have bought significant learning experiences to us as an organization. As I was talking about legacy, that is the tail of the last one that we went through. So in building capital, we started out, I can remember our first balance sheet 1981 from being a bank.
I can go back to 1976 when I think we had a negative balance sheet. We've got our founder here, Ian Cantor, and that I can't remember, about ZAR90 1,000,000 negative. But we add ZAR1.7 million of capital, ZAR97. That stage, the rand was below 2 to the pound to about GBP 1.80 to the pound. So we started with GBP 970,000.
Today, we've got GBP 5,400,000,000 of capital. And you see you have lots of bumps in the road where you don't create capital, but then you have these spurts where you do. To we had £17,000,000 of funds. We said it was funds under administration. I'm still trying to work out what they were, but that was in our 1981 annual report.
I'm not sure exactly what they were because we didn't have an asset management arm yet. But today, we have GBP 161,000,000,000 of funds under administration. I think we had £7,000,000 of deposits. Today, we have £31,000,000,000 of deposits. We had GBP 4,000,000 of loans, mainly to doctors, accountants and some small corporates.
Today, we have GBP GBP 25,000,000,000 of loans across our various business units. Our first year's earnings as a bank was ZAR280,000 that translated to GBP 160,000 and to now this is statutory GBP491,000,000. Our share price, which were below ZAR 1, I don't know, we're ZAR 95 odd, but obviously, we've seen a lot of ups and downs. When we listed in London, we listed at £1.60 it's been tougher since the financial crisis as we start as we try to get our business model appropriately reshaped, which we believe it is now and it is there for the future. So we think that hopefully you guys will start recognizing the platform that we've built and where this platform can be taken and more energetic and smarter leadership.
I think one thing Investec has always been is about the client. So I've got some extracts from our annual report in 1984, 1985, some of you weren't born yet, but still, pursuant the strategic to build committed relations with clients over time. We started corporate banking relations. That was Bernard's job when he moved from being a trader Ian was cross with him because he wasn't happy with something that he did, so he moved him into corporate banking relations. And he had to go and look for corporate clients.
In 1985, Investec believes it should concentrate on knowing its clients and their requirements, recognize the value of its relationship the clients over time, maintains a policy of building committed long term relationships internally and externally. These are things that are very ingrained in our value system and our culture. And I think people who deal with Investec and particularly the Wealth Businesses and the Private Bank will know how client orientated we are as a firm. So today, our focus remains identical. We have a client focused approach.
Our clients are our business. We are not all things to all people, so we serve select market niches, which where we can compete effectively. Our distinction lies in our ability to be nimble, flexible, innovative and to give clients high levels of service. To work with our clients to build their wealth while at the same time creating value for our shareholders. To say in that process, we spent 1,000,000 establishing our brand, gaining recognition.
These are some of the ads over the years. You've got the one there with a hedgehog. Don't avoid risk manage it. And the hedgehog's got little thimbles on it. So you know those things that you use when you're knitting, so you don't prick your fingers.
It's got those things on there. We've also got the one, not just another bank and the Leaning Type Bs, I can't remember what they had said. But we've got lots of this in our history. I think we now have an internationally recognized brand. Our Zebra is recognized in lots of different geographies around the world and lots of people love the Zebra.
We were rated the 2nd best banking brand in South Africa and we're not a retail bank. We're not across. We don't have branches everywhere with our banner hanging out. Yes, we make a lot of noise on TV with some of the sports that we sponsor and other initiatives that we adopt. But clearly, we're very proud of this achievement.
I think we've also invested in our talent and leadership. I know I've just got a headcount chart here, but we put on lots of programs. People development is very important. We have lots of intern programs in our organization. We grow from within.
The next generation of leadership Hendrik started with us in 1991 as a youngster coming from Old Mutual. Okay, Bernard had to go and wait on the beach to actually find him to hire him so that he could convince him to join Investec. Fani joined us as a Board member in 2003, almost to the day when he became one of our first PE partners and he was a client of that for about 5 years, be 6 years before that. So we've had strong relationships with the people that are moving to the next generation. And clearly, our leadership, if you take our banking leadership, they've been here at least, I remember 94 is Richard and David, Henry, who bought his business when he was at HSBC, Steve Elliott joined us in the mid, I'm trying to work out 80 something.
Kieran Whelan joined us in the 80s. Kim MacFarlane, who's taking over as Finance Director, responsible for Finance, IT and Operations, she joined us with Hendrik just after Hendrik when he had 2 people. So we've had a long history with the people that have worked for us. Bernard Lin and I have been here 38 years, Ian longer because he started the business, okay? He's just non exec like I'm going to be one day.
So we also have always cared. We've cared about our people. We've cared about our environment. We've cared about the world around us. If you look at this one quote from the 1996 Investec Bank Limited Annual Report.
We talk about socioeconomic imperative, greater economic participation for all members of South Africa. That theme that is still being spoken about today that we talk about that the ANC call radical economic transformation. We call it accelerated inclusive, right, because we don't like the word radical economic transformation. We talked about that in 1996, just after and we talked about it even before that. We started trying to back entrepreneurs to we started a thing called the business place.
I can't remember exactly when, but it said 201. We've always had our people actively involved in social responsibility. We backed a thing called Cedar City Campus, a university to try and educate young rural people in when we moved from 55 Fox Street 20 years ago to this building and we gave them 55 Fox Street for free for 10 years. So we have always cared. We've always focused on education and entrepreneurship.
So our major program, Pro Max. We had we said to Chonio, I forget the numbers, but we had I think 1200 people write maths for Matric. That was 0.5% of the people that wrote maths for Matric. Over 300 of our people got A's, 6,000 in the whole country got A's. We got 1200 people, half percent, 5% of the As and I'm excluding the people from private schools who would have got As who wrote matric.
So that's an intervention that is significant. That is helping uplift people when you give people the skills to go forward. I'm not taking long, I apologize, but I need to say all this. I think in transforming our communities, we've been actively involved in the sporting the YES project, which the President has spoken about many, many times. We've actually to pay one of our foundations have paid for the cost to get it up and running.
We've housed the people that since moved to get it up and running and we put a massive amount of effort as an organization. All our staff come up as I walk past them in the past, can I help with the YES project? That's the kind of culture and value system that has been created. We also do a lot on the environmental side, supporting the economy of wildlife, making sure that we will still have a big five because a big five is very important tourists to come to South Africa. If you go to a big four because you lose your rhino, then they go to Kenya instead of South Africa.
These are very important things for our society. And our most recent project is a thing called Innovate Africa, where we're taking water to villages. We already done 2, we're going to do 15 and hopefully that can be escalated as it gets have broader support from the corporate environment. We've still got villages in this country where people have to walk 5 to 10 ks to get dirty water from a stream. We've now started I think we're doing our 3rd where you put a borehole driven by SOLO into the villages and you give them clean water in the village.
So hopefully, we can do with the rest of society a lot more on that front. So these are all important things for Investec. It's not just about the money. We've always said to you, yes, you want more ROE, but you also have to make a contribution because if you don't make a contribution, if you don't uplift, you won't have a society to get ROE from. And I think that's a big issue in South Africa.
So over 38 years, we've built what we believe to be a quality franchise that has the will to survive and thrive in all conditions. We believe we have people with wisdom, professional ability and individual brilliance that operate in a strong cultural context, where effective performance is the driving force. Relieve a business that is conscious not only of our duty to clients and shareholders, but also to the individuals within the business and the broader communities we serve. To I was worried about this. I think we are very proud and happy to hand over a solid, sustainable, caring organization to the next generation of leaders, knowing that they are well equipped to take the group to the next level.
I think I'll quote from Winston Churchill because we've been through many ups and downs in life that success is not final, failure is not final. It's the courage to continue that counts. And I think that if I talk about my colleagues who worked with me over many, many years, 3 of us are stepping down over the next year, Bernard Kanter and Glen Berger. I think that together with the rest of our team of leaders, there are many times when you've had the courage to have the courage to continue. We've as I said, we've been through 5 of these crises, all different, some worse than others.
To but the resilience of this organization, resilience of the people in the organization has given us the courage to continue. So that's the end of my story. I think just a few thank yous. I know I've gone on long. I'm normally finished in half an hour.
Today, I'm 55 minutes. I think we've got our founder, Ian Canter, here. He was the guy with original vision and he's still on our Board. And there was Ian always had big ideas, and I thought the guy was mad. When you say, this is what we're going to be one day, and I thought, yes, we're just lending money to doctors.
So I've got my colleagues, Bernard, Glyn, I can see lots of colleagues here who have worked with us for many, many years, I can't mention all of you. I have to thank all of them for the kind of support that we have received from each and every one of you over many, many years. I've got my colleague Bradley Tapnak, who's been with us for a long period of time, I have to mention him personally because he's how old are you, 72? 71, sorry. You look 72.
Now you look Bradley Tapanek stepped down from the Board of Investec Bank Limited, I guess, last night to because Fonny became an executive. To I'm running rushing the goal here for me, but doesn't matter. He came in as executive, so we're getting legally out of balance. So Bradley stepped down. He's still on the Board of some of our other operating subsidiaries.
And as my colleague Richard Weyenrod has said as long as Bradley wants to work Visa has a place that invested because of the wisdom and the understanding that he brings. So Bradley, again to you, thank you. There are many more of you that I could thank personally, but I'm also going to thank my Investor Relations team, Ursula and the rest of the team who have made sure that my job is very, very easy because I understand everything that happens in this organization and make sure that everything is delivered on time in the right form. So I always said they'd rather die than not deliver and that's part of an Investec value system. I've got my wife and my son here who have had to bear with me over many, many years.
And again, I thank them. Shareholders, we sometimes we deliver returns to you, sometimes we haven't, sometimes we got pretty grumpy. Obviously, we've tried to build a sustainable platform. And then sometimes things just don't go right in the world and sometimes stuff happens. But hopefully, you'll see that you have a good platform and that my colleagues who are taking over from Bernard, Lynn and I can drive this business forward and get you that great ROE that you think is elusive and under our regime.
I think the media, there are many times in life where I used to shout at you. I learned as I got a bit older, then I mustn't shout at you, I must talk to you. To so thank you all for being there. And we do listen to what you say as we do with analysts because at the end of the day, if you can't listen to what people say, then hubris is a very, very bad thing. I want to congratulate Fani and Hendrik who are taking over the organization and driving it forward alongside Kim, MacFarlane and Kieran, we will also be Board members, Richard Wainwright, Dave Vannebault, Steve Elliott, Henry Blumenthal.
There are many of you that I need to congratulate who will help us take this organization forward and still carry the flag. And as we said, we're not disappearing. We move from the front of the bus to the back of the bus and people say, will you be able to keep quiet at the back of the bus? And I hope so. I'll try, otherwise they won't let me in the building.
They already tell me you can't go to credit meetings anymore. And then our incoming Chairman, Perry, Perry Crosswhite, we had a long association with him. He left us many years ago. When we bought Guinness Marne, he was an executive of Henderson Crosswhite. We always say Perry used to smile with his teeth because he's a very tough fellow to negotiate with when you negotiate incentive packages.
But he came back onto our Board many years later and we thank him for assuming the role of Chairman. He did get his appointment. I think you saw an announcement last night. So Perry, thank you and welcome in your chair position from Senior Independent Director. Kumar Sinyani, I know he's not here, unfortunately, went to a memorial service for Cheryl Paralysis in laws who were unfortunately have murdered.
If you have seen that in the newspaper, that there's a memorial service and our sympathies go to Cheryl and her family to for that horrible deed that still I don't know how people can do that to an 84 year old and 94 year old, particularly people who've been active in our society to try and help everyone. But Kuma takes over as Chairman of Investec Bank Limited, I think from yesterday. And then Brian Stevenson takes over from Fani as Chairman of Investec Bank Plc. So that's the end of my story. I'm sorry you had bear with this last 25 minutes of history, but it is the last time we can stand and talk to you in this capacity.
So I thank everybody for all that you've done for us, for the clients, for everyone who's made a difference to make Investec what it is today. I'm going to call on Perry just to say a few words.
Can you hear me? It's a great honor to stand here today and to thank Stephen, Bernard and Glyn For the phenomenal business you've built over almost 40 years, it's quite unbelievable what you've achieved over that period. A business with over 10,000 employees, offices in almost every financial center in the world, Operating profits of around €700,000,000 and a market capitalization combining the 2 markets it's quoted on to of around £6,000,000,000 That's quite remarkable. On behalf of all your stakeholders, Your employees, your shareholders and the societies to which you contributed so much, I thank you. Perhaps, Iain's great achievement was handing over the running of the business that he founded to you 3, and I hope your greatest achievement will be handing a business over in such good shape to You're such a strong team who are succeeding you, and we are all delighted that you will remain part of the group to different roles going forward.
We're always there to guide us going forward. Thank you so much.
Questions? I can't really have questions. They always want to ask questions. No questions. Any questions there in London?
Dave? What's his name? The fellow from Numis. To no one. We'll start from
the No questions, Yasmeen.
Okay. Even we quietened him today. Okay. Yes, Jogger. No one from Joburg.
Okay. Well, enjoy. There's drinks and stuff and food, I hope. So enjoy. Thank you.