Finance

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa)  – South Africa’s Public Investment Corp. was reckless with pensioners’ funds when it invested about 90 billion rand ($6.6 billion) in bonds of state-owned utility Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd., according to the Association for Monitoring and Advocacy of Government Pensions. Other poor decisions by Africa’s biggest money manager included the provision of financial support to business ventures of media tycoon Iqbal Surve, AMAGP representative Albert van Driel told a commission of inquiry in…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa)  – Nigeria is leading a continent-wide drive to raise as much as $9 billion to help African nations fund projects including oil exploration, refineries and pipelines, the country’s oil minister said. Africa’s largest oil producer is working with more than a dozen other nations grouped under the African Petroleum Producers Organization, or APPO, to raise $1 billion in start-up funding for the African Energy Investment Corp., Minister of State for Petroleum…

MAPUTO (Capital Markets in Africa)  – Gemfields Group Ltd., the owner of colored gemstone mines and maker of Faberge jewelry, has agreed to a 5.8 million pound ($7.6 million) settlement with a group of Mozambicans who said they suffered rights abuses around the company’s ruby mine in the north of the country. London-based law company Leigh Day last year brought a claim on behalf of the 273 people who lived near the Montepuez Ruby Mining…