Banking

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The bank, which has offices in Johannesburg and London, is readying a spinoff of its asset-management business in March and also plans to sell some private-equity investments. The lender wants to reduce its 25 billion rand ($1.7 billion) of private-equity holdings to 15 billion, Richard Wainwright, the chief executive officer of Investec’s South African bank, said in an interview at the lender’s local headquarters. “If we are successful in releasing…

LONDON (Capital Markets in  Africa): The Bank of England kept interest rates on hold in Governor Mark Carney’s final meeting, waiting for more evidence of an economic rebound before supporting it with a cut. The pound jumped. Policymakers voted 7-2 to keep the benchmark at 0.75%, an unchanged split from their previous meeting that belied investor expectations the decision was on a knife-edge. The committee noted that surveys of business activity have picked up “quite markedly in some…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa): Kenya’s central bank joined its South African counterpart by unexpectedly cutting interest rates, citing well-anchored inflation expectations and an economy that’s operating below its potential. The monetary policy committee reduced its key rate to 8.25% from 8.5%, Governor Patrick Njoroge said in an emailed statement on Monday. That’s the second consecutive cut and moves the rate to the lowest in more than eight years. All three economists surveyed by Bloomberg said it…

KIGALI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Changing weather patterns are pushing up food prices and will drive inflation in Rwanda for the first few months of this year, central bank Governor John Rwangombwa said. Unexpectedly heavy rains in the second half of 2019 caused some crop damage and food inflation reached 23.8% in December, the highest in almost three years.  “Because of the bad rains we had in the last quarter of 2019 we expect inflation in…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria turned the screws even tighter on lenders by increasing the amount of money they need to park with the central bank for the first time in almost four years in an effort to tame inflation. The West African nation’s central bank raised the cash-reserve requirement for lenders to 27.5% of total deposits, from 22.5%, to curtail excess liquidity in the banking sector, Governor Godwin Emefiele told reporters Friday…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – In August, Google announced a global crackdown on Android apps that offer short-term loans, saying it wanted to protect consumers from what it called “deceptive and exploitative” terms. But five months later, payday-style applications offering fast money for one or two weeks are still easy to find in many countries on Google Play, the company’s marketplace for Android apps. Some charge interest rates that can exceed 200% annualized. Lending apps…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – A closely watched measure of U.K. economic activity unexpectedly surged to the highest level since 2018 in January, potentially undermining the case for a Bank of England interest-rate cut next week. IHS Markit’s flash index for output across the whole economy jumped to 52.4 as firms cited reduced political uncertainty in the wake of Boris Johnson’s decisive election victory. That’s up from 49.3 last month. The Purchasing Managers Indexes had…