Adrian Saville (Dr)

Adrian Saville’s qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) (cum laude) degree and M.Com (cum laude) from the University of Natal.   He completed his PhD (Economics) at the University of Natal in 1997, for which he was awarded the Economics Society of South Africa’s Founders Medal.  He is a UNESCO laureate and a matriculant of Linacre College (Oxford).  He has completed programs in value investing and competitive strategy at New York’s Columbia University and Harvard Business School in Boston.

Experience: 

In 1994, while completing his doctorate in economics, Adrian Saville formed an investment vehicle which became the forerunner to Cannon Asset Managers where, today, he is an executive director and serves as the chief investment officer (CIO). Adrian’s conviction to build his own asset management company was based on his distinct investment philosophy of contrarian, deep-value investing and on his genetic makeup having been confirmed by a brief spell in the corporate world. He has experience in managing all of the major asset classes.

Adrian Saville has successfully combined teaching and business over the years, having lectured at the University of the Witwatersrand, the University of KwaZulu-Natal and the University of Pretoria.  Currently, he holds a Visiting Professorship in Economics and Finance at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS), where he also teaches competitive strategy.  Adrian Saville won the coveted Excellence in Teaching Award at GIBS in 2008 and 2009, and was previously nominated for the Top Speaker of the Year Award at GIBS.  Adrian Saville’s successful career has encompassed consulting widely to government and the corporate world.

Adrian Saville has published broadly in peer-reviewed journals and books, and is a member of the Investment Analysts Society and Economics Society of South Africa.  An area of focus in his work is the competitiveness of companies, industries and countries and, as such, an enquiry into what enables South Africa and South African firms to succeed in an increasingly demanding and challenging global environment.