Our Team
Vaughan Jones
Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner
Vaughan boasts a wide-range of financial services industry skills. He has worked variously in private equity, credit ratings and insurance, in the process gaining extensive corporate finance and insurance institution credit related experience in South Africa and other emerging markets. In 2010 Vaughan co-founded the Fulcrum Group, a leading provider of specialist lending, investment and management services to the South African insurance market. He served as its chief executive officer until January 2018. During his tenure Fulcrum established itself as the largest premium financier in Africa with a loan book in excess of R1bn and assets under management of over R8bn. He is also a co-founder of Vertus Capital, and was integral in establishing the UK’s first specialist provider of business loans to the Independent Financial Advisory market. In May 2018, Vaughan partnered with Mahogany Private Equity to launch Calibrate.
TAURAI MURANDA
Founding Partner
Taurai is a Chartered Accountant who qualified with Deloitte. Taurai is an experienced investment professional who started her private equity career with Ethos Private Equity as an investment specialist, before joining Women Investment Portfolio Holdings Ltd (“Wiphold”) to set up and run their private equity division. She left Wiphold to co-found Mahogany in 2003, and under her leadership Mahogany has become an established, black female-owned and managed, professional private equity company. Mahogany has extensive investment exposure to the insurance industry, and in her personal capacity, Taurai has deep insurance expertise through her various board directorships, both past and present, at Hannover-re group companies, Assupol and most recently Telesure.
TONO PINILLOS
Chief Financial Officer and Founding Partner
Tono is a Chartered Accountant; he completed his articles with Deloitte Johannesburg in the FIST division gaining exposure to insurance, banking, lending and brokerages. In his 10 years with Mahogany, Tono has gained extensive private equity experience in a variety of sectors, with a strong focus on insurance related enterprises of varying sizes and growth stages. Within the insurance industry Tono has been involved in mergers, management buy-ins, partial exits, and venture capital investing into insurtech start-ups. He is an experienced investment professional comfortable in fulfilling the various roles in the private equity deal life cycle.
MASI MUZAMHINDO
Associate
Masi Muzamhindo holds a masters having recently completed his M.Sc. in Financial Markets and Investments at SKEMA Business School (France, Paris). Prior to undertaking his masters, he worked at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) – a real estate investment manager and Lentus Asset Management. Masi has also passed the Level II exam of the CFA Program.
