Africa

Barclays has this evening executed a R13bn ($900m) accelerated bookbuild in shares of Barclays Africa Group, its separately listed South African subsidiary, as the first stage in its already announced plan to divest the bank. The trade was covered in 35 minutes and multiple times oversubscribed.

French firm Fnac will imminently launch syndication of its loan to buy retailer Darty, after winning a bidding war with South Africa's Steinhoff. Meanwhile, banks supplying a £920m loan for the thwarted rival await instructions.

The £920m loan for Steinhoff’s bid for Darty remains in place, although the South African firm has been outbid by French retailer Fnac.

Just two working days after Numis’s dashing block trade in Saga stock on Thursday last week, Credit Suisse brought another sparky, sole-managed deal to the market on Monday night, with a £1bn sale of SABMiller shares for Jan Kulczyk, the Polish billionaire.

Although the deal has taken longer than planned, the $150m loan for Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) will be increased following strong demand from Chinese banks, according to a banker on the deal.

Standard Bank of South Africa has grown its loan from $600m to $1bn in syndication, largely driven by demand from the four Chinese lenders in lead roles.

In this round-up, trade settlement picked up in March, Asian exchanges saw declining USDCNY futures volumes, Nigeria will include the RMB in its FX reserves, a survey found the RMB is likely to replace the Hong Kong dollar as most popular currency in HK, and a new cross-border scheme was established between Singapore and China. Plus, a recap of GlobalRMB's top stories this week.

Steinhoff International, the South African furniture maker and goods retailer that has been on an acquisition spree, raised €1.1bn on Thursday with a convertible bond that bucked the recent trend of deals that have struggled, partly because it was the kind of simple, traditional structure investors like.

South African furniture retailer Steinhoff International has nearly completed syndication of its £920m loan to buy French retailer Darty, according to a banker close to the deal.

South Africa’s Investec Bank expanded the syndicate for its latest loan from 17-20 banks, including two Chinese lenders.

The CNY NDIRS curve is steeper after a stronger CNY fix backed light offers in the short end while improved price data triggered paying around the five year tenor. Meanwhile, Nigeria is considering issuing a Panda bond, writes Deirdre Yeung of Total Derivatives.

The Brics bank is to finally make its capital markets debut later this month by issuing green bonds in RMB with the proceeds to be channelled into energy and infrastructure projects, sources have told Emerging Markets, a sister publication of GlobalCapital Asia.