The Editorial Team |

This week on the frontiers: Nigeria grabs fund managers’ attention

Within the past week, Nigeria postponed its presidential election, begged for more international help in fighting Boko Haram, saw its currency plumb a new record low, and joined a list of countries that ratings agency Standard & Poor’s is poised to downgrade. The impact on investors? They’re starting to like what they see. Michael Levy, manager of Barings’ $50m frontier markets fund, says the country’s market is starting to be “extremely cheaply valued”. In an…

What’s driving African banking…and what’s stalling it?

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Very few Africans make use of formal financial services. In fact, only 24% of adult Sub-Saharan Africans had a bank account in 2012, while the global average was 50%, says the Global Findex Database. In the following countries less than 10% had an account that year: Sudan, Senegal, DRC, Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Madagascar and Mali. The main reason for this low level of financial inclusion in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is low income. Closely…

Runa Alam Considers Why Africa’s Opportunities Far Outweigh Its Risks

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Runa Alam is something of a private equity pioneer. Alam co-founded Development Partners International, which she calls the first pan-African firm, in 2007. London-based DPI’s clients now include the $9.3 billion Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System and International Finance Corp., the private sector development arm of the World Bank Group. In a region where private equity general partners complain about a paucity of exit opportunities, DPI has managed eight initial public offerings and six corporate…

IFC’s raises $5 mln in first Rwandan franc offshore bond

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KIGALI, Feb 13 (Reuters) – The World Bank’s private sector arm has raised 3.5 billion Rwandan francs ($5 million) with the first offshore bond in the Rwandan currency, it said on Friday. The landlocked central African nation of 11 million people has been attracting a steady stream of investors and firms drawn by its small but growing market, and its debut $400 million Eurobond in 2013 was heavily oversubscribed. “It was done to create an…

Nigeria: election delay heightens risks

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On Saturday, 7 February, the Nigerian presidential election was officially postponed from 14 February to 28 March due to security concerns. The opposition party, the All Progressives Congress (APC), has called this a “setback for democracy”. They claim that the incumbent People’s Democratic Party (PDP) may be using the terrorist insurgency in the Northeast as an excuse to delay an election they believe they cannot win.With this election set to be the closest since the end…

Global Private Equity & Venture Capital Investment in 2014

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Private equity fundraising down 9% to $486bn in 2014Preliminary figures released by research provider Preqin indicate that global private equity fundraising reached $485.7bn in 2014, constituting a drop of 8.7% from $532bn in 2013. Prequin expects the fundraising figure for 2014 to increase by 10% to 20% as more information becomes available. On a quarterly basis, 253 private equity funds raised $110bn in the first quarter 2014, 276 funds secured $153bn in the second quarter,…

S&P may reduce Nigeria Credit Ratings

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S&P may cuts Nigeria Credit RatingsStandard & Poor’s Ratings Services put Nigeria’s credit ratings on watch for potential downgrade following the fall in oil prices and continued political instability according to S&P’s analysts led by Ravi Bhatia wrote in the statement: “Political risks also remain significant”. Nigeria is the latest country that S&P has docked for reasons related to oil. Its BB-rating is three notches below investment-grade territory. In light of the months long oil slump,…

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