The Editorial Team |

Nowhere to Hide for South Africa’s Rand as Trade Tensions Ease

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The ink drying on the phase-one U.S.-China trade deal may be good for emerging-markets generally — but it bodes ill for the rand as investors return their gaze to South Africa’s domestic challenges. The South African currency has slumped 3.6% versus the dollar this year, the worst performance among emerging-market peers after Brazil’s real, even as easing trade tensions and an improving global economy fuel demand for riskier assets. A gauge…

Amethis Seeks 30% Stake in Kenya Retailer on Expansion Spree

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Amethis Finance plans to acquire a minority stake in Naivas, a Kenyan retailer looking to expand amid competition from new entrants including Carrefour SA. The Africa-focused investment company’s unit Amethis Fund II agreed to buy 30% of the retailer, subject to regulatory approval, Naivas Chief Commercial Officer Willy Kimani said, declining to disclose the value of the deal. Naivas plans to open as many as eight stores in Kenya annually for the next…

CDC Group Seeks to Double Africa Investments With Energy Bet

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – CDC Group to invest 2 billion pounds ($2.6 billion) in African businesses over the next two years as the U.K.-owned investor looks to double its portfolio on the continent. This is in addition to $400 million of deals already signed off, CDC Group Chief Executive Officer Nick O’Donohoe said in a statement. Those approved transactions include a $100 million trade-finance loan to Johannesburg-based Absa Group Ltd. and an agreement to provide $100…

Isabel dos Santos Diverted Funds from State Firms, ICIJ Says

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LUANDA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Isabel dos Santos, Africa’s richest woman, built her multi-billion dollar business empire via a series of questionable deals involving Angolan state assets during her father’s 38-year rule of the resource-rich nation, according to a report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Dos Santos got access to lucrative deals involving state-owned oil company Sonangol, diamonds, land and telecommunications and funds were diverted to offshore bank accounts linked to her and her…

Free Markets Made Davos. Now Governments Are Crashing the Party

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – In a memorable exchange at Davos last year, tech billionaire Michael Dell was explaining how higher taxes on the rich had never done much good anywhere, when he was contradicted. Actually, said Erik Brynjolfsson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, they’d worked pretty well within living memory in his own country, the U.S. For an executive crowd that’s thrived under 40 years or more of policies based…

Man Who Cut Libya’s Oil Supply Is Getting Harder to Handle

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – No one, it seems, was able to reason with Khalifa Haftar. If the idea was for an impressive cast of big hitters to apply enough pressure to bring the 76-year-old Libyan military commander to heel, it didn’t work. On the eve of an international summit in Berlin on Sunday, Haftar followed through on months of private warnings and crippled his country’s oil supplies by shutting down half of the production….

Europe Mulls Military Mission in Libya, Amid Oil Disruption

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The European Union may deploy a military mission to help enforce an arms embargo and a potential cease-fire in Libya, as the bloc scrambles to contain a conflict that’s drawn in Russia and Turkey and that threatens to destabilize the Mediterranean. While no decisions were taken at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, two officials present in the discussion said there was consensus that preparations should begin…

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