dirk kotze

Manager operations and marketing

• The opportunity to work in the financial services industry and from day one be exposed to the total business was something I could not pass by. Rock Capital does asset management and the founder Pierre van der Walt was looking for new and fresh ideas. Initially I was appointed as portfolio manager, but soon saw the opportunity of manager as much more challenging. My duties include month-end reporting and checking of fee income, personnel contracts and partnership agreements, FSB compliance through our compliance officers, general marketing and training of new portfolio managers and company strategy formulation. I still do portfolio management and build my own client base as well. Contributions and projects I have started include:
• Special reporting project for clients that lead to our new software development that is going to change client relationship management in the industry
• Bringing in partners for the auto-trader development
• Helping to develop our fund software
• Started the social media marketing of the company
• Helping set up the new stock broker firm
• I left Rock Capital due to financial reasons as my remuneration was based on commission and not for work done.

Finance director

• Globalfish was established in 2008 when the management of the Tuna division in BCP did a management buy-out. I was brought in as Financial director after leaving Shoprite. The idea was that I fix the current problems they had and implement a basic system before being pulled in on a more operational level. My duties included :
• management reporting for 3 companies
• managing of stock, debtors, creditors and expenses
• foreign exchange contract allocation and back up for trade in the FEC’s
• full HR function as well as general office manager
• In September 2009 I was moved over as Projects Director to start new business opportunities into Africa with new product lines and ideas. This never materialized as the finance department still needed my services up to my resignation.

Project accountant

• After my articles I was appointed as Project Accountant in the Risk Management department of Shoprite Checkers. The department looked after compliance and international tax matters. My duties included:
• registration of investments and loan agreements with African central banks
• loan repatriation and cash management
• foreign exchange calculations and monitoring
• transfer pricing and tax risk projects
• in-house insurance department management reporting
• other smaller projects included system cleanup for automated loans and working together with international trade to refine the exports system
• I also trained article clerks in foreign exchange transactions and calculations for tax purposes
• I travelled to Mozambique as well as Angola to meet with officials and legal partners to register loan agreements, investments, and to come up with solutions on how to repatriate cash out of these countries when documentation was a problem. I successfully managed to register millions of USD as investment and repatriated over 2 million USD which the company was ready to write off

University of Stellenbosch

University of South Africa (UNISA)

University of Stellenbosch