From a South African Olympic gold medalist to hedge fund investor

Cameron van der Burgh has gone from an Olympic-winning swimmer to a hedge fund portfolio manager in the United Kingdom.

Van der Burgh was born in Pretoria in 1988 and attended Glenstantia Primary. He matriculated from Crawford College in Johannesburg in 2006.

His swimming career started at the age of 11. He took up the sport as an outlet for his energy after being diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

After making his debut in 2007, he would represent South Africa at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics.

He obtained his first world long-course record in the 50m breaststroke in the semi-finals at the South African National Championship in April 2009, breaking a seven-year-old world record.

He won the world title in the 50m breaststroke in Rome, Italy in 2009. He would set a record time in the event at the Commonwealth Games later that year.

He would also win the 100m world title at the 2010 short-course World Championship.

In the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, he won the Gold Medal in the 100m breaststroke, setting a new world record with a time of 58.46 seconds.

In the 2014 Commonwealth Games, he would again go on to win the gold in the 50m breaststroke. He would lose the 100m breaststroke to Brit Adam Peaty, who now holds the world record in both distances.

However, the South African team would win the bronze in the 4 by 100m relay at the 2014 games.

A year later, he would go on to break the World Record in the heats of the 50m Breastroke at the World Championships, but would go on to get silver in the final. He won another silver in the 100m

At the Rio Olympics in 2016, Van der Burgh scored the silver medal in the 100m Breaststroke, his second Olympic medal.

He would go on to win another World Championship title at the World Short Course championships in the 50m breaststroke.

What now

He retired from professional swimming in 2018 at just 30 years old and moved into the world of investments.

After studying Financial Management part-time through the University of South Africa, he moved to London to become an analyst at Andurand Capital, a hedge fund.

Hedge funds often mix traditional and non-traditional investment strategies to maximise investor returns. They are often only accessible to traditional financial institutions. They have little retail investor accessibility.

Hedge funds employ non-traditional strategies, including short positions, merger arbitrage, convertible arbitrage, and other opportunistic strategies.

He focused on the short to medium-term supply and demand for crude oil. This included crude oil marginal pricing, refinery modeling and volatility analysis.

He was promoted at Andurand Capital to a derivative portfolio manager with a particular focus on energy products.

In 2022, he moved to alternative investment firm Millennium as a portfolio manager. The hedge fund manages $74.7 billion in assets globally, making it the fourth largest globally.

He was given the Order of Ikhamanga in Silver in South Africa, where the Presidency honours South Africa for excellent achievements.

The Presidency praised him for his work with several charities and for using his fortune to fund feeding schemes for underprivileged children in Alexandra, near Johannesburg.

He has made several appearances around the country giving motivational talks. In 2019, Van der Burgh also joined Laureus Sport for Good Foundation as an ambassador.

The organisation uses sports as a tool to drive social change. He has participated in several programmes offered by Laureus.