In mid 2008 Louis Van der Watt (CEO of Atterbury) approached me to be a part of the prestigious Waterfall development, which he was busy securing with the Waterfall Islamic Institute. I knew Louis through my dealings with Atterbury whilst at RMB.
I accepted Louis’s offer and in October 2008, joined Atterbury with my key responsibility being the management of the Waterfall Development, including the new CBD Waterfall City. As part of the Atterbury Property Development team I reported to James Ehlers (MD of Development within Atterbury). In 2009, Gideon Oosthuizen and Louis requested that I accept the role of Chief Operating Officer of Atterbury Investment Holdings (“AIH”), a public unlisted company at that time, with around 600 shareholders and 80% shareholding in Waterfall. Once I moved to AIH, Coenie Bezuidenhout assumed responsibility within the Atterbury Property Development team over Waterfall.
In order to improve the corporate governance and eliminate conflict of interest between Atterbury and AIH, I was appointed as CEO in 2011 and was asked to exit as a shareholder of Atterbury.
Waterfall began gaining substantial momentum as a number of key tenants were secured including Massmart, Cell C, Altech and Group 5. Due to the scale of growth and the impacting financial strain on AIH to fund both infrastructure and new developments, the AIH Board took the strategic decision in 2013 to list AIH. This strategy created a platform to raise capital, created liquidity for shareholders and improved the AIH brand. Later, we rebranded AIH to Attacq and successfully listed on the JSE on 14 October 2013.
On 14 October 2015, after being listed for two years on the JSE, Attacq’s gross assets increased from R12,7 billion to R23,3 billion as at 30 June 2015. The initial small team of around 10 people has grown to a total of 88 Attacqers and the Attacq shareholder base has increased from 600 shareholders to over 8 000.
Over the past seven years I have developed a number of close friends at Atterbury and have shared some amazing successes with them. The Attacq and Atterbury relationship is strong with a number of joint initiatives and shareholdings such as Newtown Junction, Mall of Namibia, the massive Mall of Africa and our co-shareholding with Hyprop in AttAfrica – the fund that focuses on the development of shopping centres in Africa. Atterbury is also our development partner on Waterfall and we have recently co-invested with Atterbury Europe in two malls in Cyprus.
Morné Wilken, CEO Attacq
