About
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Simon Freemantle is Standard Bank’s Senior Political Economist. He joined Standard Bank in 2008 and spent his first 2 years working from the bank’s Nairobi office as an East African analyst. In his current role, Simon is the bank’s dedicated South Africa political economist. For the past ten years (2015 - 2024) Simon has been ranked 1st in South Africa in the Political Analysis category of the Financial Mail’s annual Ranking the Analysts Awards; while in 2024 Simon ranked first, together with colleagues, in both the ESG category, as well as the Innovative Research (Equities and Non-Equities) category.
Simon has given a course on SA’s political economy to an executive MBA class at the Gordon Institute of Business Science and has presented on SA and African political economy topics at Columbia Business School; Oxford University’s African Studies Centre; Chatham House (London); and the Council for Foreign Relations (New York).
Simon has a BA degree in Law, an Honours degree in International Studies (cum laude), and a Master’s degree in International Relations from the University of Stellenbosch and the University of Amsterdam. Simon is based in Cape Town, South Africa, and is a Fellow of Class XIV of the Africa Leadership Initiative.
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