MTN Raises $1 Billion in Bond Sale to Fund Capital Expenditure

MTN Raises $1 Billion in Bond Sale to Fund Capital Expenditure

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – MTN Group Ltd., Africa’s largest wireless carrier by sales, raised $1 billion through the sale of bonds to boost working capital and fund capital expenditure. The Johannesburg-based company sold $500 million of February 2022 notes with a coupon of 5.373 percent and the same amount of October 2026 securities at 6.5 percent, MTN said in a statement on Thursday. The company sought funds after reporting its first-ever half-year loss,…

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Nigeria’s Bad Loans Soar as Banks Battle Slumping Economy

Nigeria’s Bad Loans Soar as Banks Battle Slumping Economy

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bad loans in Nigeria’s banking system soared to more than double the limit set by the regulator as the industry struggles with an economic downturn. The ratio of non-performing loans to total credit rose to 11.7 percent at the end of June from 5.3 percent at the end of 2015, the Abuja-based Central Bank of Nigeria, which requires banks to keep the measure below 5 percent, said in a report…

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Gas shortages turn Nigeria’s Dangote to coal to power cement

Gas shortages turn Nigeria’s Dangote to coal to power cement

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Nigeria’s Dangote Cement has turned to locally-mined coal to power its plants in a bid to end disruptions caused by gas shortages and lower its production costs. “All our cement plants have been converted to coal,” Aliko Dangote, the company’s billionaire majority owner and chairman, told a business conference on Thursday, adding they would use 12,000 metric tonnes of coal each day. Dangote’s move is unusual in an era…

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Nigeria Mulling Oil Assets Sale That Could Reshape Industry

Nigeria Mulling Oil Assets Sale That Could Reshape Industry

LAGOS, Capital Markets in Africa: Nigeria’s possible sale of some of its oil and gas assets to raise money and boost the contracting economy in Africa’s most populous country could reduce the government’s influence over its biggest industry. President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic advisers are working on a plan “to generate immediate large injection of funds into the economy through asset sales, advance payment for license rounds, infrastructure concessioning,” to help deal with the slump in oil…

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Nigerian Lawmakers to Probe Claim $17 Billion of Oil Stolen

Nigerian Lawmakers to Probe Claim $17 Billion of Oil Stolen

LAGOS, Capital Markets in Africa: Nigeria’s lower house of parliament ordered an investigation into whether $17 billion of fuel exports were stolen. Most of the oil and liquefied natural gas ended up in the U.S. and some went to China and Norway between 2011 and 2014, Johnson Agbonayinma, a lawmaker, told the House of Representatives in the capital, Abuja, on Thursday. The missing products include about 58 million barrels of oil and 727,000 metric tons…

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Richest African Says Nigeria Needs $15 Billion for Economy

Richest African Says Nigeria Needs $15 Billion for Economy

LAGOS, Capital Markets in Africa: Nigeria needs $15 billion from asset sales and borrowing to revive a slumping economy and boost foreign reserves, according to Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man. “Through sales of assets, through loans from Bank of China or wherever, we need something like $15 billion,” Dangote, a Nigerian national, said in a Bloomberg TV interview at the U.S.-Africa Business Forum in New York on Wednesday. “We’re having a problem as the reserves are low….

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Nigeria’s Biggest Miller Says Firms Face Huge Challenges

Nigeria’s Biggest Miller Says Firms Face Huge Challenges

LAGOS, Capital Markets in Africa: Flour Mills of Nigeria Plc, the country’s biggest miller by market value, said manufacturers in Africa’s most populous country are finding profits under pressure from a fall in crude prices, a weak naira and rising input costs. “Taken together, these factors have contributed to a perfect storm,” Chairman John Coumantaros told investors at a meeting in the commercial hub, Lagos, on Thursday. Flour Mills was able to “offset the impact” of…

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