The Editorial Team |

Standard Bank Lifts Targets as Sees South African Economy Improving

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Standard Bank Group Ltd., Africa’s largest lender by assets, said it expects its return on equity to rise as South Africa’s economy improves. “The positive steps taken already by the ruling party subsequent to its leadership conference will improve business and consumer confidence,” the Johannesburg-based bank said in a statement on Thursday. The return on equity target range has been increased to as much as 20 percent from an earlier…

Sanlam Scours Africa for More Deals After Biggest Purchase

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Fresh from sealing its biggest ever deal, Sanlam Ltd. is still scouring Africa for more acquisitions to extend its lead as the continent’s largest financial-services company outside of banking. The Cape Town-based insurer will spend $1.1 billion to take full control of Morocco’s Saham Finances SA, bringing its total investment in the firm to almost $1.7 billion since February 2016. The deal will give Sanlam access to Saham’s 26 markets across…

MTN Casts Eye Over Empire as Carrier Mulls Over Where to Chop

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Africa’s biggest mobile-phone company is doing a spring clean of its empire. MTN Group Ltd. said Thursday it’s conducting a review to decide whether it really needs to be in all 22 of its markets across Africa and the Middle East. Some of them are tiny, others are war-torn while still more have regulators desperate to curb the Johannesburg-based company’s perceived dominance. Here are a few countries where MTN is…

Exxon Punished for Departing From Big Oil’s Austerity Hymnal

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Exxon Mobil Corp. is ramping up capital spending even as the rest of Big Oil preaches prudence. Investors punished the outlier. The world’s biggest publicly-traded oil company by market value unveiled an aggressive revamp of its upstream portfolio on Wednesday, lifting cash outlays by at least 25 percent to more than $30 billion a year in the early 2020s. That’s in stark contrast to rivals such as Chevron Corp. which…

Aspen CEO Sees China Overtaking South Africa as Biggest Market

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Aspen Pharmacare Holdings Ltd. sees China eventually overtaking South Africa as its biggest market as the company completes its transition to a global therapeutics business from an Africa-focused generic-drugs maker. The business sells medicines in more than 150 countries and is looking for partners as it expands in China, the Middle East and the U.S. The infant-milk formula market is just one area that represents a good opportunity in Asia’s…

Tunisia Can’t Defend the Dinar, Central Bank Governor Says

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TUNIS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Tunisia can’t defend its currency “even if it wanted to,” and must instead focus on narrowing its trade deficit to revive the economy, according to central bank Governor Marouane El Abassi. El Abassi, in his first news conference since being appointed last month, said the central bank raised its benchmark interest rate by 75 basis points this week to curb inflation, which he said risked becoming “uncontrollable.” The dinar has weakened…

Trump’s Derogatory Comment Dogs Tillerson’s First Day in Africa

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – It didn’t take long for President Donald Trump’s derogatory comment about African nations to come up in Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s first visit to the continent as top U.S. diplomat. At a press conference with African Union Commission Chairman Moussa Faki in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, a journalist asked Faki and Tillerson whether the U.S. should apologize for the remark. The reporter said the comment, which Trump has denied,…

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