Rakesh Garach

Rakesh Garach is the Chairman of the Board at the National Empowerment Fund.

Rakesh Garach qualified as a Chartered Accountant from the University of Natal and has in the past 25 years gained diverse and in-depth experience in the financial services industry. He also has significant experience in mining, retail and manufacturing. He has held multiple roles in both the private and public sectors.

Over the past 20 years Mr Garach has been intricately involved with investment strategies and was a founding shareholder of Utajiri Investments. As an integral part of Utajiri’s investment into Deutsche Bank, Mr Garach was deployed to the role of COO where he was actively involved in managing all the operations of the equities, corporate finance and banking activities in South Africa. He is an Independent Non-Executive Director of Pacific Wildcat Resources Corp and served as an Independent Non-Executive Director of Hosken Consolidated Investments (HCI) Ltd from March 2008 to January 2012. He also chaired the Audit Risk Committee of HCI.

Mr Garach previously served as a Senior Partner within Assurance Services at Ernst & Young (Johannesburg) and prior to that also gained enormous international experience while at the fi rm, having served at their offices in London and Amsterdam. He was recruited by Citibank, N.A. when the institution re-opened its offices in South Africa post democratisation. He was part of the team that established the bank’s operations in South Africa.

Mr Garach serves on a number of boards. He is a board member and Chairman of the Audit Committee of KZN Growth Fund Managers. He also served on the Audit Committee of the Financial Sector Charter Council. Mr Garach was a board member of the Gauteng Partnership Fund and also the Audit Committee Chairman. KZN Tourism. Mr Garach was recently appointed to the Board of U Bank Limited.

Mr Garach has been Member of Board of Trustees of National Empowerment Fund since 16 December 2009 and was the Chairman of the Audit Committee from 1 January 2010 to 11 March 2014 and a Member of the Risk and Portfolio Management Committee.