Private Equity

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – A deepening crisis at South Africa’s biggest money manager is threatening to cast a pall over the economy and throw into doubt potential deals, including the bailout of the nation’s largest clothing retailer. Nine Public Investment Corp. directors quit on Friday, saying the institution overseeing the pension funds of most South African civil servants has entered a “state of paralysis” following misconduct claims against some board members. Those included questionable investments in the…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Partech announces the final closing of its Partech Africa fund at €125 M ($143 M) above its hard cap and establishes East Africa presence. The Partech Africa Fund achieves a final closing at €125M, more than double the size of its first closing a year ago at €57M ($70M). Backed by a unique set of financial institutions, major corporate partners and successful entrepreneurs, Partech Africa sets out with the…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – Conall Laverty, who raised over $1 million for his Dublin-based startup, jokes that his mother still wants to know when he’s going to get a real job — maybe at Google or one of the other technology giants scattered across the city. U.S. companies flooding into Ireland now employ, either directly or indirectly, about one in five workers in the country. Last month, Facebook Inc. and Salesforce.com Inc. unveiled plans to hire 2,500 more people…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Vodacom Group Ltd. closed some South African stores on Thursday as protests intensify over the level of compensation the mobile-phone company is prepared to pay an ex-employee who had an idea for a popular call-back service. While Vodacom says it accepts a 2016 court ruling that the company should pay Kenneth Makate for his creation, the two parties are at odds over the correct amount. Makate’s cause has been taken…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Coca-Cola Co. sees plenty of expansion opportunity in Africa after taking full control of Nigerian juice maker CHI in a deal that underlines its growing emphasis on lower-sugar drinks and emerging markets. The U.S. soft drinks giant on Wednesday acquired the remaining 60 percent of CHI for an undisclosed amount, three years after making an initial investment in the Lagos-based company. The acquisition “gives us the platform that allows us to target…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Steinhoff International Holdings NV paid former Chief Executive Officer Markus Jooste about 5 million rand ($380,000) for the two months he worked for the South African company in fiscal 2018, before he quit suddenly amid an accounting scandal. The payment was disclosed in a report published Thursday by Pepkor Holdings Ltd., a clothing retailer with more than 5,200 stores that was spun off by Steinhoff in 2017. Danie van der Merwe, who took over from…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Torched homes, gutted shopfronts and fields of rotting corn greeted Laker Betty as she returned to the town in South Sudan’s breadbasket she fled in terror a year ago. She’s one of thousands of civilians tentatively returning to the East African nation after a war that at its height rivaled Syria for the dubious title of the world’s worst conflict, claiming almost 400,000 lives. As President Salva Kiirprepares to welcome rebels…