May 16th, 2012 by Tom Minney
Five leading Africans and innovators were named Social Entrepreneurs of the Year 2012 Africa last week at the World Economic Forum on Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The awards are made by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and were presented by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum.
The five winners include 2 entrepreneurs from South Africa and 1 each from Ethiopia and Rwanda, plus an award to a team (2) in Burkina Faso:
Bethlehem Tilahun Alemu, Co-Founder and Managing Director, soleRebels, Ethiopia
SoleRebels uses recycled car tyres for rubber soles to create durable, stylish and eco-friendly footwear for international markets. It offers training and employment to hundreds of underprivileged workers in Ethiopia, tapping the country’s rich artisan heritage and creating a new employment model for local enterprises. it also uses other environmentally friendly practices and is committed to zero carbon footprint.
Sameer Hajee, Chief Executive Officer, Nuru Energy Group, Rwanda
The group works with micro-entrepreneurs to disseminate its Nuru LED light, which gives up to 26 hours of light and costs one-sixth of the cost of kerosene to recharge. It can be recharged using an off-grid, pedal-powered platform. So far, Nuru Energy has set up 70 village-level entrepreneurs who have sold 10,000 Nuru lights. Many homes in Africa are not connected to electricity grids.
Paul Scott Matthew, Director Africa, North Star Alliance, South Africa
In the 1990s, Paul Matthew saw the alarming impacts of HIV/AIDS on mobile workers such as truck drivers and realized these workers lacked access to basic healthcare. North Star Alliance provides mobile workers and related communities with continual access to high-quality health and safety services through a network of interlinked clinics known as “Roadside Wellness Centres”. Since opening its first centre in 2005 in Malawi, North Star has grown to 22 centres in 10 countries.
Andrew Muir, Executive Director, Wilderness Foundation, South Africa
The Wilderness Foundation, founded in 1972, integrates conservation programmes with social and educational work. It has trained thousands of youth to be community leaders and national park rangers and more than 100,000 disadvantaged/vulnerable youth have benefitted from the Wilderness Foundation through its social intervention and environmental education programmes. The stewardship of the Wilderness Foundation has rehabilitated over 200,000 hectares of African wilderness and these areas are being expanded in the interests of conservation and environmental protection.
Seri Youlou and Thomas Granier, Co-Founders, Association la Voute Nubienne, Burkina Faso
Seri Youlou, a farmer from Burkina Faso, and Thomas Granier, a French mason, built a Nubian vault home in Burkina Faso over 10 years ago. By training farmers in the construction of homes with vaulted earth-brick roofs, the association provides an affordable, ecologically sustainable housing alternative and source of income to farmers during the off-seasons. Today, more than 200 masons have built over 1,300 Nubian vault homes in West Africa.
Hilde Schwab, Chairperson and Co-Founder of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, commented in a press release: “Africa has seen tremendous growth over the past decade. Social entrepreneurs use innovative approaches to extend access to healthcare, education, energy and housing to marginalized populations that may not otherwise be included in the traditional markets. They ensure that growth, such as that experienced in Africa, is and will be inclusive.” Social entrepreneurs implement innovative and pragmatic solutions to social problems by tackling the root causes and creating social transformation
The Schwab Foundation was founded in 2000 and has been identifying the world’s leading social entrepreneurs in over 40 countries around the globe.
April 27th, 2012 by Tom Minney
The Nigerian Stock Exchange says it will have the fastest trading system in Africa when it upgrades its trading to NASDAQ OMX Group’s X-Stream platform, with a target date of second quarter of 2013. The new system will handle a wide range of instruments, accounts will be accessible from smart-phones and it will enable the NSE to host other exchanges’ trading platforms.
Previously the NSE was automated with NASDAQ’s Horizon system. The new platform is part of the wider reforms being carried through by CEO Oscar Onyema, some of which were initiated by the previous interim administrator Emmanuel Ikazoboh. Reuters reports that reforms to the market include allowing covered short-selling and extending trading hours. The news agency reports that exchange officials said that the new trading system will build confidence in the market’s transparency and adds that analysts expect the market to end 2012 with gains.
The signing ceremony was held on 24 April, chaired by CEO Onyema and Adeolu Bajomo, (Executive Director, Market Operations and Technology) from the NSE, and for NASDAQ Sandy Frucher, Vice Chairman of The NASDAQ OMX Group and Lars Ottersgard, NASDAQ senior vice president and head of technology. The NSE and NASDAQ OMX have been working on designs since September 2010. Frucher said that the surveillance system has been integrated into the trading system while Ottersgard was reported as saying the latest edition of the X-stream technology matches orders in under 100 millionths of a second.
According to a report in This Day newspaper, Onyema described the new platform as high-performance, robust and scalable, multi-asset, multi-market matching trading engine: “The new trading platform will enable the NSE to have the fastest trading engine in Africa and investors, through their stockbrokers, will have real-time access to market prices, their portfolios and be enabled to execute market orders in near real-time from anywhere and on a wide range of devices including smart phones.”
Onyema noted that the new system would improve transparency and provide efficient price discovery in the market, among other benefits, stressing that investors in the market would benefit significantly from the system upgrade as it would afford them the opportunity to diversify their investment portfolio: “With this new system, equities, a fully functional bond market and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) will be accommodated in phase one of the project, while derivatives will be introduced in the second phase. The system will also enable the NSE to host other exchanges.” Several West African countries are discussing plans to open stock exchanges.
Bajomo said the process of selecting the system had been rigorous and that the NASDAQ OMX X-stream is used by 94 exchanges around the world. “We will work aggressively to go live with the Nasdaq platform by the second quarter of 2013, but this will depend largely on the preparedness of the other market operators.”
The price of the new platform is mostly quoted in the Nigerian press (for instance Daily Independent newspaper as US$2 million. A day earlier, This Day newspaper had put the cost at over $8.8m.
Other reforms: market makers, ETFs
Media reports (for example here) quote Onyema pointing to other reform targets, including a big rise in the number of listed companies, vibrant trading of those securities and a wider range of products: “As part of the strategic transformation of the exchange we set out last year to launch five products in five years and in December 2011, we launched the first exchange-traded fund in West Africa, the ABSA NewGold ETF. We are working on launching more products in the medium term and by 2013/2014, we plan to create an options market that will trade stock options, bond options and index options. This would be followed by a futures market in 2016 that will comprise currency futures and interest rate.”
On market liquidity, he said the exchange recently unveiled 10 market makers: “With this in place, we will soon start short selling and securities lending to further increase efficiency and liquidity in the market by making available securities where they are needed. These initiatives are a vital part of increasing the vibrancy, depth and competitiveness of the market. We have also put in place rules to allow companies to repurchase outstanding shares through a share buy-back process. This would facilitate the repurchase by a company of a portion of its outstanding issued shares. The aim is to improve shareholder value (ROA, ROE, EPS, P/E); meaning a companies that feel their share prices are undervalued may engage in share buy-back to shore up the prices while also reorganizing their capital structures.”
Reportedly the NSE aims for market capitalization of $1 trillion by 2015 and to be “the gateway to the African markets”. According to an earlier report in This Day newspaper the 10 stockbroking market makers were selected from a list of 20 applicants. They include: Stanbic IBTC, Renaissance Capital, Future View Securities, Vetiva Capital, ESS/Dunn Loren Merrifield, WSTC Financial Services, Capital Bancorp, FBN Securities, Greenwich Securities and CSL Stockbrokers. Onyema said: “The companies selected went through a very rigorous process and met the minimum net capital requirement of N570 million ($3.6m). We also examined their compliance history and looked into their operational capabilities, including their technology and processes.” He added the firms were trained, debated the appropriate market structure and the Securities and Exchange Commission approved the selection. The market makers used a draw to select a basket of quoted companies in which they would provide the desired level of liquidity.
April 24th, 2012 by Tom Minney
A new securities exchange in Lusaka (Zambia) is installing tried-and-tested bond and derivative trading software and says it will be ready to launch operations next month, May 2012. BaDEx has trading platforms that include spot and derivative trading in bonds, currency, commodities (such as derivatives on metals and silo certificates on the spot market) and a variety of other derivatives including agricultural commodities, precious metals, equity and energy.
There is also a central scrip depository system (CSD) with a separate core management, risk solution, surveillance and settlement systems and platforms. The CSD will apparently link to CSDs in South Africa, Europe and the US and with the central Bank of Zambia’s real-time gross settlement system.
BaDEx, also known as Bond and Derivatives Exchange, reports that it was licensed by Zambia’s Securities and Exchange Commission on 1 January 2012 and the licence covers all securities under the Securities Act – bonds, equity, derivatives and commodities. It has signed a contract effective 12 March with South Africa’s STT (www.sttsoftware.co.za, which has also provided the JSE’s bond trading software for many years), for STT to immediately deploy trading, clearing, settlement and surveillance systems, and systems for auctioning government securities that will be suitable for the central bank, among others.
Dominic Kabanje, CEO of BaDEx, told AfricanCapitalMarketsNews that the exchange is a public-liability company owned by “banks, pension funds and private companies including the major securities dealers in Zambia”. He says they started with 6 local stockbroking members (approach stockbrokers Madison Asset, Integral Initiatives, Intermarket Securities, Laurence Paul Investment Services, Pangaea Renaissance, African Alliance Securities for more information) but are also looking for remote members, working with a South African merchant bank.
Mr Kabanje said they are now doing primary listings. BaDEx will start secondary trading using an online, Internet-based platform when the systems go live and are also seeking to partner with an international clearing house. In a press release he said they had been excited for 18 months: “We are glad to have finally concluded and signed the contract with our software systems vendors. STT applications have been tried and tested in the South African financial markets at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), who have used this software for the past 18 years.
“We are currently setting up a network of domestic and foreign-based settlement banks, local and remote foreign members and dealers, institutional underwriters, a clearing house as well as primary panels of domestic, regional and international investors. We plan to link up all willing domestic and regional banks, institutional investors, pension funds, treasury departments, the local central bank, the government debt management office and the local member brokers to our system by providing interfaces and online access to our platforms.
“We will also shortly join the international community of CSDs in South Africa, Europe and the United States initially to facilitate faster and smoother clearing of international securities transactions. The applications from STT and others will enable us to do this and in addition will allow us to compete internationally for bond and derivatives business”.
“I do not see any obstacles from the Zambian side for companies wishing to list. Even SA companies can list on BaDEx. We want Zambian companies to dual list on JSE and BaDEx. At BaDEx we are implementing SADC protocols on the free-trade area as well as enhancing intra-regional trade. An exchange is one such conduit for regional trade. We will, however, have to deal with the problem of exchange controls in SA.”
Michelle Janke, STT’s Managing Director, said the company was happy to reach further into SADC: “We have worked closely with the executives of BaDEx for more than a year, and the closely formed relationship will stand us in good stead over the coming months whilst we deliver all the software applications and prepare the new securities market in Zambia to go live. We hope that in due course through an ongoing cooperation between BaDEx and regional merchant banks we can assist in transforming Lusaka into a key financial hub within the SADC region. We will be there to make this happen operationally.”
Products to be traded include: corporate bonds, municipal bonds, currency futures and options, interest-rate derivatives (including swaps), equity derivatives and commodity derivatives on underlying copper, cobalt, gold, oil, wheat, soya and maize spot markets, bond derivatives market, spot bond market, spot and currency derivatives market, commodities derivatives (including metals) and the commodities spot markets (with silo certificates), agricultural derivatives market, spot equity and equity derivatives markets, precious metals derivatives market and energy derivatives market.
April 21st, 2012 by Tom Minney
The Committee of SADC Stock Exchanges (CoSSE) has launched a website as part of a drive to create more liquidity in the southern African stock exchanges through better data and visibility for the exchanges. The new website (www.cossesadc.org) was launched on 19 April.
CoSSE has 10 members: the exchanges of Botswana, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. It was established in 1997 and is a collective and co-operative body of the various stock exchanges in the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It forms part of SADC structures as it has a formal status under the SADC Finance and Investment Protocol (FIP). The objectives are:
- To improve the operational, regulatory and technical requirement underpinnings and capabilities of SADC exchanges
- To make the securities markets of SADC exchanges more attractive to both regional and international investors
- To increase market liquidity and enhance trading in various securities and financial instruments
- To promote the development of efficient, fair and transparent securities markets within the SADC region
- To encourage the transfer of securities markets’ intellectual capital and technical expertise among the member countries of CoSSE
- To encourage interaction among market participants
- To encourage the development of a harmonised securities market environment within the SADC region
- To maximise co-operation among CoSSE members.
The new website is hosted and maintained by a leading South African data vendor I-Net Bridge. The company has been extending its footprint into Africa to provide investors with accurate, timely and reliable African financial data. Where it is available, the firm provides information from over 18 African countries, including equity and index data from the exchanges, a range of African economic time series, annual company financial statements and company news through their various professional and corporate-solutions products. Stephen Phillips of I-NET Bridge says: “It is I-Net Bridge’s goal to become the preferred supplier of African content globally and assist in generating interest and liquidity to all African exchanges”.
The new chair of CoSSE is Beatrice Nkanza, chair of the Lusaka Stock Exchange, taking over after the term of Emmanuel Munyukwi, CEO of the Zimbabwe bourse. Gabriel Kitua, CEO of the Dar es Salaam SE, was elected vice-chair. The meeting, held at the JSE Ltd in Johannesburg, also discussed business plans for regional cooperation.
April 6th, 2012 by Tom Minney
My favourite read, the Economist gives a rounding editorial here on why the world should back Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala for next President of the World Bank (www.worldbank.org). “May the best woman win!”
April 6th, 2012 by Tom Minney
The making of the market – this article by Dr Eleni Gabre-Madhin, CEO of the Ethiopian Commodities Exchange (www.ecx.com.et) gives a fascinating, self-critical and revealing account of the creation of the exchange and the sometimes breakneck pace at which the market grew and took on new commodities such as coffee. It’s very good, and well worth reading in full, http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/oc70.pdf.
Particularly important is the idea that a commodity exchange will only have traction in Africa if it improves the lives of smaller rural farmers and traders. Eleni puts focus on “the market institutions needed for quality grades and standards, warehouse receipts, market information, coordinated trading, payment systems, and contract enforcement. All of these, I argued, should be established in a holistic and integrated fashion, rather than in the piecemeal approach observed all over Africa in different donor interventions. I pushed further, presenting for the first time the idea that a commodity exchange was precisely the holistic platform that would integrate all of these elements.”
These were the aims of the ECX, according to a 2005 concept paper: “a commodity exchange would build the needed institutions from the ground up for grading and certifying quality, issuing warehouse receipts, trading, relaying market information to all actors, enforcing contracts, and ensuring payment and delivery. But that was not all. Ethiopia’s commodity exchange would be designed to serve smallholder farmers and small traders, it would not exclude those with less education or less capital, and it would balance the interests of all actors and of the public and private sectors. A commodity exchange would not aim to eliminate traditional markets around the country, but rather to build up these informal markets by adding technology and systems to bring more transparent, more efficient, and more reliable trading to all concerned.”
Later she details the achievements, including: “The value of ECX trades has risen by 368% to reach US$1.1 billion in 2010–11 (NB the Ethiopian fiscal year-end is in July, its calendar year in September, due to a different calendar). Our storage operations have grown from one warehouse in Addis Ababa to 55 warehouses in 17 regional locations, and from 5,000 tons to a total capacity of 250,000 tons. In 2010–11, we graded, weighed, stored, handled, and delivered 4.7 million bags without a single delivery default.
“Membership is at 243, and our clients, who trade through our members, number about 7,800. Farmer cooperatives representing 2.4 million smallholder farmers make up 12% of our membership. We have electronically linked our clearinghouse to 10 partner commercial banks, and we settle US$20m or more daily on a “T + 1” basis (that is, the day after trade)— the only stock or commodity exchange in Africa to do so. In other words, anyone can sell to anyone in Ethiopia and be assured of payment the next morning. We have not had a single payment default, shortfall, or delay since our start. This is a financial revolution in itself.
“Our market data reach far and wide. We ‘push’ price data in real time, in less than 2 seconds, to outdoor electronic ticker boards in 32 rural sites; to our website, which attracts visitors from more than 107 countries daily; to 256,000 mobile subscribers through instant messaging; and to the radio, TV, and print media. Users can also “pull” market data through our toll-free phone-in service, which received more than 1m calls in September 2011. That’s 61,000 calls each trading day, of which 70% were from rural users. This is nothing short of an information explosion in Ethiopia, and we are pushing further still.”
She adds that farmers are now getting 70% of the end price, compared to 38% before the ECX, and this means more investment in production and quality, with volumes in some grades tripling. A new financing system means farmers can use warehouse receipts as collateral for bank loans, bringing new financing to rural areas.
Many are interested in potential for commodity exchanges in Africa as a way of increasing agricultural productivity and combating poverty but it is worth recalling that the ECX only launched after nearly 15 years of studies and research both in Ethiopia and other African markets. It shows that big development success stories are not achieved overnight, or without deep thinking and strategy, coordination and hard work, as well as determination to keep going through mistakes, hostility and downturns.
It also shows the a major contribution markets will play in Africa’s coming development.
April 2nd, 2012 by Tom Minney
This morning (2 April) South Africa’s securities exchange, the JSE Ltd, announced a revised strategy to attract more listings from African countries, as they say international interest in investing into the continent’s growth story continues to soar. The JSE is closing its Africa Board and moving the 2 listed companies onto the Main Board (listing requirements for the Africa Board are the same as for the Main Board) or to Alt-X if they are growth companies. The JSE is also stepping up trading in depository receipts (DRs) and offering a broader range of exchange-traded funds and debt instruments.
Siobhan Cleary, Director of Strategy and Public Policy at the JSE, said in a press release: “The JSE’s existing African offering includes 12 African companies. In future, there will be no differentiation (for listing purposes). For equities, this will mean that we will list the companies on the Main Board or AltX as applicable. We will also actively market and profile the African companies that are already listed.”
She says the move is driven by demand for capital and also by the increasing supply of capital from investors. African consumer markets are increasingly being targeted by local companies and companies from overseas, including a growing wave of foreign direct investment activity. Other very active channels for investments are private equity funds, hedge funds and other investors. “We think it is time that stock exchanges started to play an appropriate role in channelling the investments.”
In October 2011 South Africa’s National Treasury announced that companies previously viewed as foreign listings would in future be treated as domestic and this makes it easier for South Africans to invest in JSE-listed African stocks and makes it easier for foreign companies to raise capital. South African institutions will apparently be able to include JSE listed companies among their domestic asset holdings. Second, the JSE has developed good relations with several stock exchanges on the continent through the African Stock Exchanges Association and the Committee of SADC Stock Exchanges. Third, there are increasing investment flows into the continent’s markets and more funds focused on the region, seen as high growth compared to many world markets.
Nathan Mintah, Chairman of the JSE’s Africa Advisory Committee, commented: “This evolution in JSE’s strategy is a step in the right direction in the quest to increase capital flows into the rest of Africa. Offering issuers and investors the ‘whole JSE’ market platform for access to instruments across the capital structure in equities, mezzanine, and fixed income combined with the JSE’s liquidity will clearly benefit all stakeholders and serve as a catalyst for product innovation in areas such as exchange traded products for the rest of Africa.”
The JSE is diversifying the instrument range it offers investors from the rest of the continent. Cleary says: “We already have four interest-rate instruments from the rest of the continent, as well as an African exchange-traded product. We will give increased focus to listing further debt and quasi-equity products in future. These will also include DRs, which are traded like shares and offer investors the same economic, corporate and voting rights as holding underlying shares directly. DRs enable issuers to reach investors located outside their home markets while reducing the risk of cross-border investment.” The JSE altered its listing requirements last year to accommodate DRs, which will provide a way for African companies to raise capital on the JSE without requiring a secondary listing. DRs are applicable for African companies regardless of whether they have an existing listing on an African exchange or any other exchange. Freely traded in South African Rands, this will allow African companies to market themselves to both South African and international investors.
Cleary says there is a pipeline of companies interested and she expects more African listings this year. The JSE is competing with international exchanges such as London and New York for key listings, and also with Australia and Toronto for mining listings. Recently Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote said (see article in Financial Times, for instance) he would take the $11bn Dangote Cement for a London listing in 2013, and last year Zambia’s Zambeef also opted for London.
The two listings on the JSE Africa Board, launched in February 2009, were Trustco from Namibia and Wilderness Safaris from Botswana. The JSE says both prefer to be ranked with their sector peers and in industry sectors. Quinton van Rooyen, Trustco Group MD, commented: “This repositioning of Trustco allows the company, whilst keeping its African identity, to be benchmarked against its peers, on a world-class platform. This can only be beneficial to Trustco and the extensive African investment community.” The JSE is also pledging roadshows and analyst events to highlight the African companies from outside South Africa.
The JSE believes that its approach provides a workable solution to the sometimes complex issue of investment on the continent. The JSE’s approach also contributes to the development of markets within their own economies. Cleary added: “There is an opportunity for the JSE to work with these exchanges and various development institutions to build capacity on the continent. It also gives the JSE the opportunity to evolve its Africa strategy. This has meant looking critically at what issuers – companies, governments and others – from the rest of the continent are looking for, and aligning their needs with the JSE’s objectives,” says Cleary.
March 22nd, 2012 by Tom Minney
JOHANNESBURG – The JSE (www.jse.co.za) says it will introduce its third wheat futures contract, with a cash-settled contract based on hard red winter wheat, referencing the Kansas City Board of Trade’s (www.kcbt.com) benchmark settlement prices. The new contract will be introduced on 28 March with expiry dates in July, September, and December 2012 and March 2013.
KCBT President & CEO Jeff Borchardt said: “The Kansas City Board of Trade is proud to be partnering with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to provide their market users access to our Hard Red Winter wheat futures contract, the global benchmark for bread wheat pricing. JSE’s respected position in global commodities trade made the idea of working with JSE quite appealing. This is KCBT’s first such license agreement with an overseas exchange.”
Chris Sturgess, Director: Commodities at the JSE, commented: “We are very pleased to be working with the Kansas City Board of Trade, which celebrates its 156th anniversary this year. Not only do they have a wealth of experience, we also share their commitment to integrity and service for the market we serve. This also represents a further step toward globalizing South Africa’s commodity markets.” Hard red winter wheat is similar in type and milling quality to South African-produced wheat, which means local market participants can consider this alternative product for price-risk management purposes specific to their wheat exposure.
This is the JSE’s third wheat futures contract and the second international wheat contract, all traded on contract sizes of 50 metric tons. The JSE’s local wheat contract is its second most liquid agricultural product. The JSE listed its first international wheat contract under license from the CME Group in July 2011.
According to Sturgess: “Offering 3 wheat contracts enables traders not only the choice on which product to hedge their wheat-price risk but also through our electronic trading system the functionality to trade the spread between the various markets. This should complement volumes across all 3 product types.”
South African local traders have had access to global commodity markets since 2009, when the JSE signed the first licensing agreement with the CME Group for a corn futures contract. It currently offers contracts on corn, wheat, soybean, soybean meal and oil.
As with other foreign-referenced commodities, Rand Merchant Bank and Nedbank Capital will be market-makers, ensuring active price quoting off the liquidity of the international market. Individual investors and corporate entities are able to invest with no limits. Pension fund managers and long-term insurance funds are subject to their 25% foreign allocation limits. And asset managers and collective investment schemes will be subject to their 35% foreign allocation limits.
Why invest in or trade wheat futures?
Wheat futures provide a way for South Africans to:
- Effectively manage the price risk with a view either on the domestic market or to more easily access the international market via the contract, which will be traded in the local currency
- Hedge or gain exposure based on expectations of directional price, spread movement or volatility in wheat either as an outright position or versus the domestic market
- Realise arbitrage and spread opportunities between the CBOT contract, KCBT contract and the local contract
- More effectively evaluate both the current and future world supply and demand for wheat and the various qualities
- Identify short- and long-term cyclical price and volatility patterns for wheat.
Full product specs can be found at: www.jse.co.za/commodities. The JSE is among the world’s top 20 largest equities exchanges in terms of market capitalisation. It is currently ranked the 20th largest exchange by the Futures Industry Association (FIA) for derivatives
March 11th, 2012 by Tom Minney
Learn from the private equity fund-raising and deal trends of 2011 and look forward to the rest of 2012 with top private equity managers and a leading Africa economist at the Private Equity Africa evening seminar in London on 14 March. Entry deadline of 31 March is also approaching fast for nominations for the Private Equity Africa awards, in association with the Coller Institute of Private Equity at London School of Business.
The PEA seminar will be at 6pm in central London. Speakers and discussions will review deal and fund-raising trends in 2011 including analysis of top deals and will also cover the likely trends and macro-economic outlook for 2012. Topics will include which countries are opening to private equity, regulatory trends, sectors likely to perform in the long-term and which are likely to take over from telecoms as the next big area of business and profits. Also looking at venture and whether investors should be looking at more early-stage deals.
Speakers include
- Andrew Brown (partner ECP),
- Yemi Lalude (managing partner Adlevo),
- Afsane Jetha (director, Duet Africa),
- David Cowan (Africa economist, Citi),
- Patrick Deasy (funds partner, SJ Berwin)
- David Parkes (corporate partner, SJ Berwin).
click here to book.
Registration will close on 31 March for the nominations for awards to celebrate excellence over a decade (2001-2011) of private equity success in Africa. Self-nominations are strongly encouraged. The awards will be done with the Coller Institute for Private Equity at LBS and will cover
The awards are structured to focus on achievements in the market, focusing on best-in-class achievements of investors and advisors in the industry.
Deal-makers will be judged on the strategy, innovation and complexity of the deals, in addition to the structure and the difficulty of the terrain in which the deal was completed.
CATEGORIES
GP Dealmaking
• Large-cap deals
• Mid-cap deals
• SME deals
• Exits
• Impact investment
Regional awards
• North African House
• Francophone House
• South African House
• Sub-Saharan House
Portfolio awards
• ESG excellence
• Turnaround
• Innovation
• Social Impact
Advisor awards
• Corporate finance
• Due diligence & risk
• Legal advisory
• Fund formation & advisory
Email awards@peafrica.com to obtain an entry form.
There will also be a 1 day summit at Thomson Reuters, Canary Wharf, London on 14 June, with the awards to be announced at a gala dinner that evening. For more details check this website. For more click on the awards page here.
March 10th, 2012 by Tom Minney
Kenya has licensed its first ethical fund, an Islamic fund issued by FCB Capital, a sharia-compliant investment bank. It is a fully-owned subsidiary of First Community Bank and the first to offer a Collective Investment Scheme geared towards ethical investing under Islamic capital markets product range.
“Kenya has ambitions of becoming the Islamic finance hub of East Africa as part of our wider aspiration to become an international financial centre,” said Stella Kilonzo, Chief Executive Officer of the Capital Markets Authority, at the licencing of First Ethical Opportunities Fund on 7 March, according to press reports in Xinhua and Coastweek. She said the CMA will continue to encourage stakeholders in Islamic finance to explore opportunities available for structuring, issuance and investment shariah-compliant products such as Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) and bonds.
She also called on Islamic finance institutions to work with CMA and the joint financial sector regulators in Kenya towards the establishment of a full-fledged single Shariah Advisory Council/ Board to enhance the consistent application of Shariah rulings. She said the council could provide guidance on product authenticity within the entire Islamic finance industry in Kenya.
Stakeholders in Islamic finance should also work together to develop the skills of professionals with expertise in Islamic financial advisory services and investment. CMA is also focusing on broad market education, tax harmonisation and formulation of policy and legal frameworks to help accelerate the growth of these new products. First Community Bank has participated in shariah-compliant components of infrastructure bonds issued by the Government of Kenya from 2009.
