The Markets

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenya’s securities exchange has moved a step closer to requiring companies to start Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG, disclosure and introducing an index for the category. The Nairobi Securities Exchange published its ESG guidance manual on Monday, with a view of aligning information reported by companies listed in Kenya with international standards. The NSE and the East African nation’s Capital Markets Authority are in discussions to introduce an ESG index…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Emerging-market currency traders will have to pick their fights carefully for the coming year after a surprisingly strong dollar and rising U.S. Treasury yields steamrolled almost everything in the developing world in 2021. With investors ramping up expectations for the Federal Reserve and other developed-market central banks to tighten policy, the likes of the Brazilian real and Hungarian forint have been weighed down by inflation and political concerns even as local…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – A short-lived reprieve for emerging-market carry trades funded in dollars looks to be over, with an upsurge in U.S. inflation making the outlook increasingly treacherous. A Bloomberg index of these bets has dropped more than 4% in the past two months, the biggest slide since March 2020 for a strategy of borrowing in the greenback and investing in developing-nation currencies. The quickest U.S. inflation in three decades is putting pressure on the Federal Reserve to…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Tesla Inc. declined after Elon Musk’s Twitter followers voted in favor of selling 10% of his stake in a poll set up by the electric-car chief. A majority of 3.5 million Twitter users — 58% — said they’d support such a sale in a Twitter poll that Musk ran during the weekend. The stake would be valued at about $21 billion based on 170.5 million Tesla shares he…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – The cryptocurrency market is now worth more than $3 trillion. As of 7:38 a.m. in London, the overall market cap of cryptocurrencies hit $3.01 trillion, according to CoinGecko pricing. The third- and fourth-biggest tokens, Binance Coin and Solana, have added more than 20% in the past seven days; all of the seven biggest coins are up over the last week. Bitcoin rose as much as 5.5% on Monday to $66,339,…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Wall Street leaders turned up their noses when Bitcoin exploded onto the scene more than a decade ago. Now they’re paying sweet premiums to crypto recruits, amassing an army of enthusiasts within the traditionally staid realm. Some of the biggest banks and financial firms have added about 1,000 crypto-related roles since 2018, according to Revelio Labs, which collects data by scraping LinkedIn. Among those hiring the most are JPMorgan Chase…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Digital-asset companies are pushing back against claims of excessive energy usage in the cryptocurrency sector as world leaders flock to Glasgow this week for key climate change talks.     Global Digital Finance, whose members include industry juggernauts BitMEX, Coinbase Global Inc. and Crypto.com called for greater data transparency around issues of sustainability. The group published a report on Monday in an effort to set industrywide environmental goals amid…