Bank of Africa Plans Mali’s First Listing on BRVM Bourse

Bamako, MALI, Capital Markets in Africa — Groupe Bank of Africa’s Mali office plans an initial public offering on the Bourse Regionale des Valeurs Mobilieres  (BRVM) which would make it the first company from the West African nation to be listed on the Abidjan-based regional exchange.

The bank, a subsidiary of Morocco’s BMCE Bank Group, will offer 400,000 shares on the BRVM from 17 December 2015 to 15 January 2016, it said in a statement published on Tuesday in the state-owned Ivorian newspaper Fraternite Matin. It aims to raise as much as 8.79 billion CFA Francs (US$14.7 million).

“In the next three months, BOA Mali will be the first company in Mali to be listed on the bourse,” Edoh Kossi Amenounve, the stock exchange’s General Manager, said by phone from Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s commercial capital. Societe des Telecommunications du Mali SA, or Sotelma, put on hold an IPO planned in 2012 after a military coup plunged the nation into violence and instability. Last month, militants linked to al-Qaeda killed 20 people in an attack on the Radisson Blu hotel in the capital, Bamako.

Bank of Africa Mali will be the fortieth listed company on the regional bourse, which trades securities from eight francophone countries in West Africa. The exchange is anticipating at least two additional listings in 2016, Amenounve said.

West African power and water producer Eranove SA and Ivorian banks NSIA Banque-Cote d’Ivoire and Societe Ivoirienne de Banque SA, a unit of Morroco’sAttijariwafa Bank, earlier this year expressed an interest to sell shares on the bourse.