As markets wobble across the world, UK floats such as Focus Wickes and Yell have already been pulled. Meanwhile the industrial tribunal led to questions about the quality and independence of the bank’s research.At the mention of the tribunal, Investec’s PR chirps up, saying the lawyers have said he must not talk about the case. But the combative Mr Koseff, 51, whose black suit and short, stocky build give him the look of a nightclub bouncer, wants to say his piece.”Any negative publicity can be embarrassing,” he says in a strong South African accent “But we will not back off We will not allow someone to hold us to ransom. We have built an organisation that does enable women to rise to senior positions.

We have no glass ceilings.”Investec’s pathfinder prospectus will be published today and Mr Koseff and his team will trudge round battle-weary institutions to persuade them to stump up £100m.Ask him why he is pushing ahead, and his answer is simple enough He doesn’t have much choice. “The key reason is that there have been changes to the tax rules in South Africa,” he says. “We are moving to a dual listed structure (with listings in Johannesburg and London) and it would be very expensive (in tax terms) if we delayed beyond 31 July.”This is hardly the best negotiating position to be in when you’re trying to raise money. But Mr Koseff says he will go ahead with the listing even if he fails to raise any fresh funds at all.

“The timing is unfortunate but we’re not in the market to raise a significant amount of capital, so it’s not so bad. And we’ve been working towards this for four years, and to stop and re-start would be far more costly. It is really a re-listing rather than an IPO.”As for why Investec is listing in London at all, the answer is the usual one of access to capital and a higher stock market rating “We don’t want to broaden our operations We want to stay narrow and focused. In order to take it to the next level we need to push ourselves into international capital markets and not remain under an emerging markets umbrella.”Investec has already snapped up UK firms such as Henderson Crosthwaite in 1999 and Carr Shepards in 1996 It may start to look at more. “In investment banking we have out platform so we would not want to buy anything more. Acquisitions could be in private banking, private portfolio management and asset management. In these kinds of times, many companies go back to their core and sell off bits.

There’s a few things around that could give us our opportunity.”The other issue Mr Koseff may face is a sceptical attitude towards South African companies after compatriots such as Old Mutual and Dimension Data came to the London market and bombed.”We are coming at a completely different time Dimension Data came in the tech bubble and at a fancy price. Old Mutual was a South African business that was listing and had to move very quickly to buy international assets. It made one or two acquisitions at fancy prices and got caught out with the timing.”He also says Investec has a broader spread of earnings than Old Mutual, which remains dominated by the rand. “Sixty per cent of our capital base is outside of South Africa and half our bottom line.”Investec is an unusual company, built up from scratch in the past 25 years. It has a unusual culture with a list of key values set out in documents. These include the following: “We will break china for the client, having the tenacity to challenge convention.