Finance

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) – If Deliveroo Holdings Plc’s listing was meant to hang an ‘Open For Business’ sign over the City of London, the opening day crash in the shares jarred somewhat with the message the U.K. had intended to send about post-Brexit Britain. Personally welcomed by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, the food delivery company’s initial public offering should have been a beacon to lure tech firms against competition from New York and Hong Kong, which…

LONDON (Capital Markets in Africa) — The warnings were stark. A vote to leave the European Union, the British government said, would trigger an immediate recession, a painful fall in house prices, and a steep drop in exports. It’s almost 100 days since Britain completed its split from the EU — almost five years after the referendum vote –- and a clearer picture of the consequences of the decision to leave is starting to emerge. The divorce…

ADDIS ABABA (Capital Markets in Africa) — Ethiopia’s government wants to find a “market friendly” solution for a planned debt restructuring to ensure it has access to the markets for more capital in coming years, State Minister for Finance Eyob Tekalign Tolina said. Eyob set out the state’s intentions on a call with investors on Thursday to discuss the proposed reorganization of Ethiopia’s loans under a Group-of-20 initiative. “We want this liability exercise to not…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa) — Mozambique’s President Filipe Nyusi has finally softened his stiff-necked resistance to foreign assistance in the fight against an Islamist insurgency in the country’s north. Help has been at hand for many months — from other African nations as well as from the U.S. and Europe — but Nyusi would have none of it. Instead, he put his faith in private security firms from Russia and South Africa. On Thursday,…

JOHANNEBURG (Bloomberg) — MTN Group Ltd. is valuing its mobile-money arm at about $5 billion, joining African wireless carriers planning to list these businesses in a region that has more mobile-money accounts than anywhere else in the world. MTN’s valuation of its unit follows Mastercard Inc. and TPG Holdings LPinvesting $300 million in Airtel Africa’s mobile-money business at a $2.65 billion value. “With similar valuations to that of Airtel, our valuation would sit at 75 billion rand, or…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) — The International Monetary Fund upgraded its global economic growth forecast for the second time in three months, while warning about widening inequality and a divergence between advanced and lesser-developed economies. The global economy will expand 6% this year, up from the 5.5% pace estimated in January, the IMF said in its World Economic Outlook published on Tuesday. That would be the most in four decades of data, coming after…