Finance | - Part 183

Egypt’s CIB eyeing Citigroup’s retail operations

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt’s Commercial International Bank (CIB) said on Wednesday Citigroup had opened its books for a due diligence process that could lead to the purchase of its retail portfolio.Citigroup said it is pulling out of consumer banking in 11 markets, including Japan and Egypt, as the U.S. bank with the biggest international business looks to cut persistently high costs.The third-largest U.S. bank, built with a series of acquisitions spanning back to the 1980s,…

Nigeria: claiming the African M&A crown

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Nigeria is home to the world’s seventh-largest population (with 173 million inhabitants), which is expected to surpass Brazil’s by 2030. And with increasing disposable incomes and a GDP growth rate around the 6% mark for the last 10 years, it isn’t hard to understand why Jim O’Neill, former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management International, included Nigeria as one of the new wave of emerging economies, alongside Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey — the MINTs —…

MTN to spend R30bn on infrastructure upgrades

Posted on by The Editorial Team

MTN will invest close to R30bn this year to grow its infrastructure in the 23 countries where it operates, in an effort to attract 17.5-million more customers. The bulk of the expenditure has been set aside for SA, where it has suffered declining revenue, and Nigeria. The board had authorised investment spending of R10bn on South African cellphone and fibre-optic networks, said CE Sifiso Dabengwa on Wednesday. That is nearly double the R5.7bn spent upgrading…

Managing Capital Flows: Lessons from Emerging Markets for Frontier Economies

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Capital flows, and their successful management, have long been a focus of the IMF’s work and policy advice. Indeed, when John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White—the principal architects of Bretton Woods—were discussing the IMF’s Articles of Agreement, they clashed on many points, but they were surprisingly in agreement when it came to cross-border capital flows. Both men took as their starting point that, as White said, “the desirability of encouraging the flow of productive…

Continued Reforms are Necessary Despite the Slowdown in Exploration Projects

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Investors are likely to delay the development of oil and gas projects in sub-Saharan Africa and change the scope of their early-stage projects due to the sharp decline in oil and gas prices. Mark Essex, director of Oil and Gas: KPMG in Kenya, says host countries will be disappointed by the postponement of the development of these projects as they have worked hard at making their countries attractive investment destinations for oil and gas players….

South Africa’s Standard Bank posts flat 2014 earnings

Posted on by The Editorial Team

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Standard Bank, Africa’s largest bank by assets, reported a 1 percent rise in full-year profits on Thursday, roughly in line with expectations, thanks to increases in lending, fees and trading. Stripping out its London-based division, in which Standard Bank is selling a controlling stake to China’s ICBC, headline earnings rose 20 percent. Standard Bank raised its dividend 12 percent to 598 cents per share. The lender said headline earnings per share (EPS)…

Private Equity Investment in Africa Buoyed by Continuous Growth in 2014

Posted on by The Editorial Team

London, United Kingdom, 2 March 2015: The outlook for private equity in Africa remains exceptionally positive for 2015, a new report by the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) reveals. This is in spite of ongoing challenges concerning subdued growth prospects in Europe and China and any short-term uncertainties on the continent itself. The report, released on 27th February 2015, shows growing support for, and increased investor confidence in, African private equity over the…

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