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Africa Executives Welcome Thiam Move, Say There Should Be More

JOHANNESBURG – African business leaders cheered Tidjane Thiam’s appointment as chief executive of Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse Group AG this week. So far, though, Mr. Thiam’s ascent to the top of a western multinational looks like the exception to the rule that executives from the continent still don’t reach the top of the global corporate elite. “He’s a great leader who happens to have roots in Africa. At some point we need to get to…

Bank seeks to raise $10 mln via share sale in war-torn Somalia

Posted on by The Editorial Team

NAIROBI (Reuters) – International Bank of Somalia (IBS), one of only a handful of commercial banks operating in the war-torn country, wants to raise $10 million in a public share offering that would be the first of its kind since civil war broke out in 1991.Somalia does not have a stock exchange and most banking is done on informal basis through money transfer firms, but IBS Chief Executive Hassan Yusuf said those ploughing money into…

Egypt bourse expects 7-8 stock listings by mid-2015: chairman

Posted on by The Editorial Team

ABU DHABI (Reuters) – The chairman of the Egyptian stock exchange expects seven or eight companies to list on the bourse by mid-2015, he said on Wednesday.Mohammed Omran told a securities conference in Abu Dhabi that three large companies had already gone public in Egypt this year. However, it wasn’t immediately clear whether these three companies were part of Omran’s calculations for initial share sales in the first half of 2015.Orascom Construction began trading on…

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…

Zenith Bank Gross Earnings up 14.8%

Posted on by The Editorial Team

Zenith Bank (“Zenith” or “the Bank”) yesterday released its audited FY:2014 result on the floor of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), outperforming our expectations. We present the highlights of the result and our FY:2015 estimates. Gross Earnings up 14.8% Y-o-Y; PAT up 4.3% Y-o-Y The wave of the release of banks’ FY:2014 results intensified yesterday, building investors’ momentum as Zenith recorded positive growth in both top and bottom line notwithstanding Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN)…

Flour Mills of Nigeria to cut capex as economy falters

Posted on by The Editorial Team

LAGOS (Reuters) – Flour Mills of Nigeria expects to cut capital expenditure by almost half this year, down from 40 billion naira a year ago, as the slowdown in the economy, caused by the oil price collapse and the weakening naira, hurts consumer spending. Chairman John Coumantaros told Reuters Africa Investment Summit that Flour Mills had spent around $750 million over the past 3-5 years to build capacity but would expected to spend around 19…

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)…

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