UBS Chairman Weber Sees `Massive’ Potential Drop in Bitcoin

UBS Chairman Weber Sees `Massive’ Potential Drop in Bitcoin

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – UBS Group AG Chairman Axel Weber said the Swiss bank won’t trade Bitcoin or offer it to retail clients as increased regulation could lead to a “massive” drop in value. “This is something where the price is really unclear,” Weber said in an interview Wednesday with Bloomberg TV at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “We fear that in the future if these investments implode and the market corrects, then…

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Nigeria May Cut Interest Rates Before July, Emefiele Says

Nigeria May Cut Interest Rates Before July, Emefiele Says

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria’s central bank could start cutting interest rates in the first half of the year as inflation eases, Governor Godwin Emefiele said. Once inflation gets to low double digits “and high single digit happens, then it should be easy for MPC to begin to look at easing,” Emefiele said Wednesday in an interview at his office in Abuja, the capital. “I want to think that between the end of the first…

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Morocco Seeks to Defeat U.S. With Fifth Soccer World Cup Bid

Morocco Seeks to Defeat U.S. With Fifth Soccer World Cup Bid

CASABLANCA (Capital Markets in Africa) – It has campaigned unsuccessfully four times before and is the sole challenger to a formidable joint bid by the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Yet Morocco still believes it has a shot at hosting the 2026 soccer World Cup. At the campaign’s launch in Casablanca on Tuesday, Moroccan officials argued the country was located in a more convenient time zone for the majority of fans, while pledging not to exploit…

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U.S. Offers Mozambique Help as Attacks Roil Gas-Rich North

U.S. Offers Mozambique Help as Attacks Roil Gas-Rich North

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) – The U.S. government is offering Mozambique help to end fatal attacks by suspected militants in the gas-rich Cabo Delgado region, the top American diplomat in the country said. Police have arrested more than 300 people since October after raids in Mocimboa da Praia in the country’s northeast, the first of which targeted police stations and the government blamed on a “radical Islamic sect.” Sporadic attacks have continued, including this month on…

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Mnangagwa Urges Zimbabwe to Move on From Ndebele Massacres

Mnangagwa Urges Zimbabwe to Move on From Ndebele Massacres

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zimbabwe’s new president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, is urging the southern African nation to put behind it one of its most painful episodes: the army’s massacre of as many as 20,000 people from the minority Ndebele ethnic group in the 1980s. Mnangagwa, who replaced Robert Mugabe as president in November, was minister of state security at the time of the killings that started in 1983, three years after independence from the U.K. Opposition leaders,…

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African Development Bank to Add $2 Billion to Nigeria Loans

African Development Bank to Add $2 Billion to Nigeria Loans

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – The African Development Bank plans to increase its loans to Nigeria by more than $2 billion next year with investments in energy, infrastructure and agriculture, its President Akinwumi Adesina said. “The total portfolio we have in Nigeria is $6 billion,” Adesina said in a Jan. 18 interview in Abuja, the capital. “We expect that by the year 2019, we will grow that into a little bit over $8 billion.” The Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based…

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Eskom Suspended CFO Quits Before Facing S. African Lawmakers

Eskom Suspended CFO Quits Before Facing S. African Lawmakers

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa)  – The suspended chief financial officer of South Africa’s cash-strapped power utility resigned a day before he’s due to face a parliamentary inquiry on mismanagement of funds and two days after the government overhauled the company’s board. Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. received a letter of resignation from Anoj Singh’s attorneys Monday, the Johannesburg-based electricity producer said by email. He resigned with immediate effect, it said. Eskom suspended Singh in late September…

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