Finance

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markets in Africa) – By the time he was 29, Yared Getachew was the youngest captain at Ethiopian Airlines. Despite his relative youth, he had spent a decade with the carrier, eventually piloting wide-body jets that crossed continents and oceans. Like so many of the airline’s pilots before him, Captain Getachew, who died on Sunday in the crash of Flight 302, was a graduate of the Ethiopian Airlines Aviation Academy. The competitive school, which…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Steinhoff International Holdings NV Chief Executive Officer Louis du Preez will give an update to South African lawmakers next week about the ongoing investigation into an accounting scandal that almost destroyed the retailer more than a year ago. Representatives of regulators and a local anti-graft police unit are also expected to appear at the parliamentary hearing in Cape Town starting March 19, Du Preez told reporters in the city on Monday. The…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Old Mutual Ltd. said earnings fell as a weak South African economy and sliding asset prices caused the insurer to miss one of its key operational goals. Full-year adjusted profit earnings declined to 11.51 billion rand ($798 million) from 12.95 billion rand a year earlier, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement. “Persistently high unemployment rates, a value added tax-rate increase and fuel hikes contributed to lower real disposable incomes…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa): President Donald Trump wants the stock market to celebrate if he strikes a trade deal with China. Investors may struggle to deliver. The outcome could fall short of the definitive resolution of trade tensions that equities investors have priced in. Instead, the most likely scenario is an accord with few details, or a paucity of specifics on which tariffs will stay and which may go. Or, as Secretary of State Michael Pompeo pointed out this…

KINSHASA (Capital Markets in Africa) – An international court ordered the Democratic Republic of Congo to pay DIG Oil Ltd. of South Africa $617 million for failing to honor two oil contracts, weeks before outgoing President Joseph Kabila finally approved one of the deals. The previously undisclosed ruling is the latest twist in an 11-year dispute over concessions in the central African nation, which may hold as much as 6 percent of the continent’s oil reserves. Kabila’s belated assent…

CAIRO (Capital Markets in Africa): Egypt’s national oil company raised a $750 million loan to fund growth, according to people with knowledge of the deal. Egyptian General Petroleum Corp. secured the five-year loan from HSBC Holdings Plc, First Abu Dhabi Bank PJSC and Mashreqbank PSC, said the people, asking not to be identified because the information is private. The lenders are now also offering the loan to other banks and syndication for the facility is expected to close…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – The “r-star” is pointing to a South African rate cut. That’s the suggestion from a study published by the South African Reserve Bank, which calculates that the country’s so-called neutral real rate, or R* in the jargon of economists, had fallen to about 1.9 percent by the end of 2017, from as high as 5.4 percent before the 2008 financial crisis. R* is the interest rate that would support…