Banking

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Many of Africa’s biggest banks and insurers have joined forces to tackle the continent’s biodiversity crisis while at the same time working out how to cash in on opportunities arising from it. The African Natural Capital Alliance, launched Wednesday, is the latest in a flurry of finance sector interest in the risks and opportunities associated with the threats to biodiversity globally and its establishment is in a continent overwhelmingly dependent on…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Kenya’s central bank unexpectedly raised its key interest rate for the first time in almost seven years to anchor inflation expectations as concerns about commodity prices build.  The monetary policy committee increased the rate by 50 basis points to 7.5%, Governor Patrick Njoroge said in an emailed statement Monday. That’s the first increase since July 2015. None of the five economists in a Bloomberg survey predicted the move. The…

HARARE (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zimbabwe’s President Emmerson Mnangagwa is trying to emulate Russian President Vladimir Putin in his attempt to revive Africa’s worst performing currency. Mnangagwa’s administration may announce plans as early as this week for government departments in Zimbabwe — under U.S. sanctions for economic mismanagement and human rights violations for the past two decades — to show “high preference” for the Zimbabwe dollar in the payment of services, according to Persistence…

NEW YORK (Capital Markets in Africa) – Goldman Sachs Group Inc. offered its first ever lending facility backed by Bitcoin, in a significant step for a major U.S. bank that accelerates Wall Street’s embrace of cryptocurrencies.  The secured lending facility lent cash collateralized by Bitcoin owned by the borrower, a spokeswoman for the bank said. The deal was interesting to Goldman because of its structure and 24-hour risk management, she said in an email. Wall…

GABORONE (Capital Markets in Africa) –  Botswana increased its revamped interest rate to counter inflationary pressures stemming from Russia’s war with Ukraine. The central bank’s policy committee raised the yield on the main monetary operations instrument by 51 basis points to 1.65%, Governor Moses Pelaelo told reporters in the capital, Gaborone, on Thursday.The bank in February said it would shift to using the yield on the seven-day Bank of Botswana certificate, known as the monetary policy rate,…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Several central banks and the Bank for International Settlements have developed prototypes for a common digital currencies platform that has the potential to make cross-border payments more efficient. The two prototypes demonstrate the technical viability of such a platform, the BIS said in a statement Tuesday with the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank Negara Malaysia, the Monetary Authority of Singapore, and the South African Reserve Bank. Codenamed “Project Dunbar,”…

ACCRA (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana’s central bank will need to raise interest rates further this year unless a decline in the cedi is arrested, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.and Absa Group Ltd. said. The West African nation increased borrowing costs by the biggest margin in two decades on Monday to arrest inflation that accelerated at the fastest pace in almost six years in February and stem a depreciation in the cedi. The currency has weakened more than 17%…