Karien Strydom

Karien has over 17 years’ experience in financial services including in restructures for African Bank, African Phoenix Investments, and Capitalworks’ investment in RFG. She was involved in the IPOs of Pepkor’s and FNB Eswatini’s respective listings and in FirstRand’s BEE unwind and Old Mutual’s Bula Tsela empowerment transaction. On sell-side M&A, she was instrumental in the disposal of Grinrod Bank by Grinrod to African Bank and Stellar Capital Partners’ disposal of Amecor to Carlyle, as well as the disposal of FNB Tanzania to Exim Bank. On buyside M&A, Karien was involved with the acquisition of a controlling stake in AfriCentric by Sanlam, the acquisition by Stellar Capital Partners of Prescient’s financial services operations, and the delisting of the Anchor Group. She was also involved with various corporate development initiatives for FirstRand Limited.

Karien joined RMB Corporate Finance in 2015, after working for the FirstRand Group Treasury where she focused on interest rate risk management. Before joining FirstRand, she was an audit manager at PwC.

Karien is a CFA chartered accountant.