Banking

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Equity Group Holdings Plc expects to lend as much as 420 billion shillings ($4.2 billion) during the next five years through a venture with Kenya’s largest mobile-phone operator by targeting small businesses. The nation’s biggest lender by market value and Safaricom Plc said last month they agreed to collaborate on financial services for their combined base of more than 30 million customers, ending a nine-year-long rivalry. Safariom “will support us to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – After years of work and millions of pounds spent in preparation for the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union, the delay to October and seemingly endless questions about the outcome are casting a cloud over bankers’ outlooks and taking the shine off the rise in shares this year. The sentiment was underlined on Friday when HSBC Holdings Plc’s Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson warned that the uncertainty is plaguing consumer and business…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – A decision by the country’s ruling party to nationalize the central bank is based on ideology and a misunderstanding of what it does, according to the institution’s governor Lesetja Kganyago. The African National Congress decided at a conference in late 2017 to nationalize the South African Reserve Bank, which is one of a handful globally owned by private investors. The shareholders have no say over monetary policy decisions and the central…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) – Mozambique’s central bank kept its key rate at a record low, saying that while it estimates inflation will accelerate slightly, it won’t compromise the regulator’s objective of maintaining macroeconomic stability. The Monetary Policy Committee held the benchmark interbank rate, known by its Portuguese acronym MIMO and introduced in April 2017, at 14.25 percent, Banco de Mocambique said Thursday in an emailed statement. It retained the policy rate at 17.25…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – KCB Group Plc, Kenya’s biggest lender by assets, plans to acquire state-owned National Bank of Kenya Ltd. through a 10-for-one share swap. If approved, the deal will be the second banking tie-up offer in East Africa’s largest economy in less than five months after NIC Group Plc and Commercial Bank of Africa Ltd. proposed a merger. The consolidation is in line with the central bank’s aspirations for a stronger banking sector. Shares of NBK, as…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s central bank says it’s premature to claim victory in the war against inflation and sees price growth stabilizing at 4.5 percent only by the end of 2021. While inflation has been inside the central bank’s target band of 3 percent to 6 percent for two years and was at the midpoint of this range in March, it’s “too early to claim that inflation is already permanently lower,”…