Features

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said they want to head off a no-deal Brexit that could rattle their economies, as both braced against the U.K.’s increasingly chaotic course toward an exit from the EU. Abe and Merkel, both 64, are two of the most outspoken defenders of the international order being shaken by Brexit and the U.S.-China trade war, as well as President Donald Trump’s questioning of decades-old alliances. Their…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Congress has only a few days left to come up with an agreement on border security spending to prevent a government shutdown and may yet see the process upended once President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address on Tuesday. Trump in recent days has repeatedly declared the negotiations a waste of time and said Feb. 1 that his speech to a joint session of Congress would reveal more…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – U.K. civil servants preoccupied with Brexit are struggling to find time for the 2019 spending review, a set-piece opportunity for Prime Minister Theresa May to show that almost a decade of austerity is at an end. Officials in the Treasury are so consumed with planning for a no-deal exit from the European Union that the spending review has already lost steam, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – South Africa’s government will announce within a month how it plans to fix Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., the embattled state utility that supplies more than 90 percent of the nation’s power. There are no easy remedies. The company is 419 billion rand ($30.9 billion) rand in debt, is losing money hand over fist, has way more staff than it needs and its aging and poorly maintained plants can’t always…

SUDAN (Capital Markets in Africa)  – Sudan’s embattled president took aim at activists who’re using social media to organize demonstrations calling for his ouster, saying only elections can bring political change in the protest-wracked African nation. “Changing the government can’t be achieved by using WhatsApp or Facebook, it is only through the ballot box and the Sudanese people are the only body that can determine who is supposed to rule this country,” Omar al-Bashir told a televised…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Gwede Mantashe, South Africa’s minister of mineral resources and chairman of the ruling African National Congress, is facing allegations that he took bribes from Bosasa, the services company accused of paying off politicians in order to win state contracts and avoid prosecution. Richard le Roux, a former regional technical coordinator for a unit of Bosasa, on Thursday told a judicial inquiry that’s probing government corruption how the company spent…