Africa

Afreximbank was offering 25bp-30bp new issue premium at guidance stage for its new five year dollar benchmark note on Tuesday.

Kenya Power and Lighting Company (KPLC) has completed refinancing on $500m of loans, reducing its costs with the help of a World Bank guarantee.

In this round-up, the AIIB gets ready for its first annual meeting as the president explains how the bank will work, the spread widens between offshore and onshore renminbi and Zimbabwe seeks trade settlement agreement. Plus, a recap of GlobalRMB’s top stories this week.

Barclays made a convincing start to its plan of reducing its stake in Barclays Africa on Wednesday night, with a successful block trade that netted $4bn of demand from what bankers on it said was a very high quality group of institutions.

A consortium including Bob Diamond’s Atlas Merchant Capital is still pursuing a potential bid for Barclays Africa, even after Barclays sold a 12% stake in it in a block trade on Wednesday night, and a senior regulator said a private equity bid would not be welcome.

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.