The Markets

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) — As the world scrambles to fight the deadly coronavirus, a microcap U.K. pharmaceutical company has seen its stock surge. Shares in Synairgen Plc have soared 845% this year, with gains accelerating in mid-March after the company got approval from U.K. regulators to start trials of its drug, SNG001, in people hospitalized with Covid-19. The company has a market capitalization of just 67 million pounds ($83 million), even after the share-price jump….

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – This podcast by Baillie Gifford explores how investors can navigate a stock market crisis. To listen to the podcast  

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) — Zambia’s Eurobonds extended losses on Wednesday and its currency tumbled to a record low after Africa’s second-biggest copper producer asked banks for proposals on reorganizing as much as $11.2 billion of foreign debt. The country “intends to implement a liability management of its external debt portfolio to lengthen maturity and enhance its capacity to meet debt-service obligations,” the finance ministry said in a request for proposals sent to lenders,…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ghana’s Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta cut the country’s economic growth forecast for 2020 to the lowest in 37 years due to the collapse in oil prices and the impact of the coronavirus. Growth in gross domestic product could slow to 1.5% with a partial lockdown of the economy and may “further worsen in the event of full lockdown,” Ofori-Atta told lawmakers Monday in the capital, Accra, according to a…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) — Africa’s most industrialized nation is waiting to discover the cost of being downgraded to junk. South Africa lost its last investment-level rating late on Friday when Moody’s Investors Service downgraded it to Ba1, citing a weak economy and an unreliable power sector. When markets re-opened on Monday in Asia, the effect was immediate. The rand fell to a record low, weakening beyond 18 per dollar for the first time. The…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — Investors trapped in some of the world’s most illiquid bond markets are rushing to short local currencies, driving up the price of hedging their positions. The implied yield on three-month non-deliverable forward contracts — or the cost of borrowing the local currency now in order to sell it in the future — has jumped threefold for Ukraine’s hryvnia this month, more than doubled for the Nigerian naira since mid-February,…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa)  — Nigeria will probably need to weaken the naira further following its devaluation last week, even as the central bank bucked global trends by holding interest rates on Tuesday to support the currency. With the decision to keep its benchmark rate at 13.5%, the central bank aims to avoid putting further pressure on the local unit after devaluing the exchange rate used by foreign bond and stock investors, which had…