Simon Freemantle

Standard Bank’s Senior Political Economist

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, primarily serving both the local and international corporate and institutional investor communities. 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 Environmental, Social and Governance (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), the Council for Foreign Relations (New York) and the New York University Stern School of Business. In September 2015 Simon delivered a talk at TEDx (Stellenbosch) on the rising demographic, urbanisation and communication trends in Africa.

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.