Former hedge fund boss dies in shooting incident

Special investigations


Author: Julius Cobbett|


26 July 2012 22:07


Former hedge fund boss dies in shooting incident


Abante’s Herman Pretorius allegedly shot and killed Basileus Capital CEO Julian Williams.


JOHANNESBURG - Julian Williams, CEO of private-equity group Basileus Capital, was shot dead in his Cape Town offices on Thursday afternoon. The alleged shooter was his former business partner, Herman Pretorius.

Pretorius allegedly shot Williams dead, then turned the gun on himself. eNews Channel journalist Lester Kiewit reports on Twitter (see tweets below) that the suspect [Pretorius] had a gunshot wound to the head and was taken to hospital where he was declared dead on arrival.

Pretorius used to be involved with a hedge fund called the Abante Statistical Arbitrage. At the time of his death he ran an unregulated investment scheme called the Relative Value Arbritrage Fund (RVAF), which many investors believed to be a hedge fund.

Pretorius had been due to attend a meeting of investors in Moorreesburg on the evening of his death. Investors were informed that the event had been cancelled because Pretorius was in a meeting with Julian Williams.

Earlier this month Moneyweb reported that Pretorius was involved in a war of words with Williams over an unlisted company called SA Superalloys. See Former hedge fund boss in dividend dispute. Williams is a director of SA Superalloys. Pretorius is not.

Pretorius had sold preference shares in SA Superalloys to about 500 private investors.

SA Superalloys stopped paying dividends this year. Pretorius accused Williams of failing to answer his questions about how investors’ money had been spent. He suggested that Williams may have used some of the money to fund Basileus Capital.

Williams responded that Pretorius had put pressure on him to pay dividends when the company was not in a position to do so. He also said that Pretorius was trying to divert attention from his unregulated investment scheme, the Relative Value Arbitrage Fund.

Basileus Capital has about 50 employees. It is responsible for sourcing investments for JSE-listed preference share BK One (JSE:BK1P). One of BK One’s investments is Avalloy, a subsidiary company of SA Superalloys.

Pretorius has a very loyal following among wealthy investors in small Western Cape towns such as Moorreesburg, Porterville, Hopefield, Malmesbury, Durbanville and Riversdale. His Relative Value Arbitrage Fund had reported excellent returns to investors but there is no known way of verifying if these returns are genuine. Pretorius is not registered with the FSB and the fund has no third party administrator.