The Editorial Team |

Bitcoin Is No Bubble, Says Investor With $213 Million Stake

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Tim Draper was walking through a pavilion at a tech conference in Lisbon on Tuesday when he was cornered by an entrepreneur touting a new digital currency. No sooner had the venture capitalist heard the pitch than he was approached by another guy hawking his own initial coin offering. Another followed, then another. It’s no mystery why cryptocurrency peddlers flocked to Draper. As founder of the Silicon Valley VC firm…

Guptas Accuse Regulator of Urging Banks to Shut Their Accounts

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – A group of companies linked to South Africa’s politically connected Gupta family said the country’s banking regulator encouraged lenders to shut their accounts, broadening a battle to retain the last of their banking services. The 20 businesses, which are suing Bank of Baroda’s local unit to keep their accounts open, have now included Reserve Bank Governor Lesetja Kganyagoand the Registrar of Banks Kuben Naidoo, whose office sits in the central…

MTN Extends Gains After Nigeria Funds-Transfer Case Is Dropped

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – MTN Group Ltd. extended gains after Nigerian lawmakers ruled that allegations of illegal repatriation of almost $14 billion were unfounded and the wireless company hadn’t violated the law. There were no “proofs of collusion to contravene the foreign exchange laws,” a Senate investigative committee said in its report released on Wednesday in the capital, Abuja. “There was evidence of massive capital outflow but that alone is not conclusive that a…

Surviving on $3 an Ounce Has Lonmin in Race Against Time

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Every day, Lonmin Plc sends thousands of miners hundreds of meters below ground, where they use drills, diggers and explosives to extract about 40,000 metric tons of rock laden with precious metals. The ore is milled, crushed, concentrated, smelted and refined in a month-long process that eventually yields about 4,100 ounces of platinum-group metals each day. Yet for all its trouble, Lonmin’s revenue in the most recent quarter was barely $3 an ounce…

Truecaller Phone App Maker in Talks With Airtel About Africa

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Swedish phone-app developer True Software Scandinavia AB is in talks with wireless operators including Bharti Airtel Limited to expand its fast-growing Truecaller spam-filtering service in Africa. Truecaller is seeking to roll out a version of the app that works with 2G phones, Chief Commercial Officer Ted Nelson said in an interview in Cape Town on Wednesday. About 70 percent of cell users in Africa use so-called service phones — devices that…

Congo Fails to Account for Infrastructure Loans, Group Says

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KINSHASA (Capital Markets in Africa) – The Democratic Republic of Congo’s government failed to account for more than half a billion dollars of infrastructure loans received from Chinese institutions over a six-year period, according to the Carter Center. Sicomines, a Chinese-Congolese copper-mining venture, received $1.163 billion in loans between 2008 and 2014 to spend on infrastructure, but disbursed only $478 million, the Atlanta-based advocacy group said in a report published Nov. 3. Its findings are…

Mining Lobby in Court Over South African Black-Ownership Rules

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s Chamber of Mines starts the first of its two-pronged legal fight over the country’s black-empowerment rules Thursday. The case will be heard in Pretoria over two days and pits the chamber, which represents producers including Anglo American Plc and AngloGold Ashanti Ltd., against the Department of Mineral Resources. At stake is whether mining companies can claim to have met black-ownership requirements even after beneficiaries have sold their stakes in…

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