Umeme completes $65m Ugandan IPO marathon

Umeme, Uganda’s power distributor, completed an over-subscribed Ush171bn ($65m) IPO last week, one of the biggest ever in East Africa and a landmark deal for Ugandan capital markets. The next step for the IPO market in the region will be a merging of the international and domestic bookbuilding processes which at the moment lead to lengthy deal timetables — in Umeme’s case, more than two months.