"We've closed some down, and some of the businesses we need to sell. We plan to transform the Australian banking business into a boutique operation," he says. What seems to have sparked the recent revival - Investec's share price on the JSE advanced 5% in seven days last week, pushing the increase over the past year to 10.6% - was an announcement that Investec might sell its mortgaging business, Kensington. If any single deal highlights Investec's patchy record on investments, it is Kensington. In 2007 Investec bought Kensington, then a subprime mortgage lender, for £283-million - about R4.2-billion at the exchange rate then - for cash and shares. Share acquisitions are often not popular with shareholders because they dilute future earnings. But the bigger problem was that, shortly after buying Kensington, the subprime crises hit, sparking global financial crises.