The Editorial Team |

Nigerian Minister Is Said to Query $24 Billion Oil Contracts

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria’s oil minister sent a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari listing at least $24 billion of contracts involving the state oil company that he said were never discussed with him or the firm’s board, a copy of the document seen by Bloomberg shows. Emmanuel Kachikwu, the state minister for petroleum resources, complained in the seven-page, August 30 letter to Buhari that during the more than one-year tenure of Nigerian National Petroleum…

Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Bitcoin Traders and Index Funds

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LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc. is weighing a new trading operation dedicated to bitcoin and other digital currencies, the first blue-chip Wall Street firm preparing to deal directly in this burgeoning yet controversial market, according to people familiar with the matter. Literally, why not? Banks — Goldman especially — trade things. If there is a thing that trades — and, particularly, if it is a purely financial asset that trades…

Ivory Coast Cocoa Farmers See Bumper Crop After Slow Start

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ABIDJAN (Capital Markets in Africa) – This year’s cocoa harvest in top producer Ivory Coast may be starting slowly, but farmers say volumes will catch up in a few months and are forecasting another big crop to follow last season’s record. Heavy rains in June and July caused flowers to fall off trees and while farmers have started reaping some pods, there are a lot fewer than this time last year, said Salam Pelega, the head…

PPC Extends Battle for African Cement Maker by Ordering Review

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JOHANNESBUG (Capital Markets in Africa) – PPC Limited hired Investec Plc to review an offer by Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd. for South Africa’s biggest cement maker and said other interested bidders should be granted enough time to conduct full due diligence. Investec has been appointed to consider the partial offer by Toronto-based Fairfax and the planned merger between PPC with local rival AfriSam Group Pty Ltd. that’s part of the proposal, Johannesburg-based PPC said in a statement Tuesday….

McKinsey Told Eskom of Transparency Risk at Trillian Capital

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. continued to pay Trillian Capital Partners Ltd. even after McKinsey & Co. warned the South African state power company that it had concerns over transparency at the project development partner. Letters written in March 2016 by McKinsey to Eric Wood, the chief executive officer of Trillian, and Eskom’s recently suspended chief financial officer, Anoj Singh, show the U.S. consulting firm was concerned about the reputation risk of working…

Zimbabwe Dollar Dearth Causes Shortages, Return of Inflation

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HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zimbabwe’s money shortage has seen card and mobile-money payments eclipse cash sales at the nation’s retailers, throttling suppliers’ stock of hard currency needed to put goods on shelves and forcing up food prices. Cash transactions have shrunk to about 2 percent of daily takings across the 33-store Spar Zimbabwe chain, from 60 percent a year ago, Managing Director Terence Yeatman said. Consumer prices as measured by the statistics agency rose 0.1…

KPMG Hasn’t Fully Cooperated in South African Probe, Regulator Says

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JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s auditing regulator said KPMG LLP’s local unit hasn’t fully cooperated with the body’s investigations into work done for the Gupta family, who are alleged to have used political connections to win state contracts. It took a meeting with KPMG’s leadership team to prompt them to engage with the probe and, even after that, the auditing firm hasn’t released certain documents, Bernard Agulhas, head of the Independent Regulatory Board for…

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