Register and its all Free.

If you are tracking the NSE Do it via RICHLIVE and use Mozilla Firefox
as your Browser.
0930-1500 KENYA TIME
Normal Board - The Whole shebang
Prompt Board Next day settlement
Expert Board All you need re an Individual stock.

The Latest Daily PodCast can be found here on the Front Page of the site
http://www.rich.co.ke

Macro Thoughts

Now let me return to the Eurobond Markets where Africa issued $81b
worth of bonds over the last six years.  These markets trade
continuously. Essentially these markets are a continuous score-card on
the creditworthiness of the Issuer. its a relatively recent phenomenon
and something many Policy-Makers will not have considered adequately.
Balance sheets are maxed out.

There are no more ‘’Quaaludes’’ and policy makers will no longer be
able to pop them. ‘’In prescribed doses, Quaaludes promotes
relaxation, sleepiness and sometimes a feeling of euphoria. It causes
a drop in blood pressure and slows the pulse rate. These properties
are the reason why it was initially thought to be a useful sedative
and anxiolytic It became a recreational drug due to its euphoric
effect’’.

Bubbles are bursting just about everywhere.

The British have long proved past masters at misreading Angela Merkel.
But this time, as reports of the German chancellor’s comments filtered
through, even in London there was stunned disbelief. Did Ms Merkel
really want to celebrate Brexit?
The exchange had come on a balmy July day in Berlin, with Theresa May
sat in the chancellor’s airy, whitewashed office. Brexit talks were
stuck. Britain’s cabinet was close to self-combustion. But Ms Merkel
wanted to raise something else: it was time, she said, to start
thinking of a “celebratory” moment that would mark the Brexit deal.
Soon enough it became clear that Ms Merkel’s intentions had been lost
in translation: the zelebrieren she had in mind was a solemn
commemoration, more akin to a Lutheran church service than
independence jamboree.
Yet her remarks were telling. Britain’s exit talks, two years on from
the referendum, are entering a new, decisive phase. Leaders are
lifting their sights to the finish line. The Brussels compromise
machine is primed. All sides see a deal within reach, possibly just
eight weeks away. “It’s clear,” says one EU diplomat, “we’re in the
endspiel [endgame]”.
A gathering of EU leaders in Salzburg this week will be the first step
of what is envisaged as a three-summit jig to a historic UK-EU
agreement. Negotiators have even begun considering the choreography of
the final act, a denouement expected to be a special summit in
mid-November.
This is not a negotiation between EU and UK. This is a negotiation
within London between Remainers and Brexiters’ Pascal Lamy

Home Thoughts

One of the beautiful huge bull elephants we encountered in Ruaha. This
one was in the area known as the small Serengeti. He cut his way
through the long meadow grasses laden with delicate purple blooms, his
testosterone fuelled aroma drifting towards us ahead of his arrival.

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

A U.S. official said Washington believed the aircraft, which is an
Il-20 turbo-prop plane used for electronic reconnaissance, was
inadvertently shot down by anti-aircraft artillery operated by
Moscow’s ally, the Syrian government.
Around the time the plane disappeared, the Syrian coastal city of
Latakia — near a Russian airbase to which the Il-20 was returning —
came under attack from “enemy missiles”, and missile defence batteries
responded, Syrian state media reported.
The defence ministry in Moscow said the aircraft was returning to the
Russian-run Hmeymim airbase in Latakia province when, at about 11:00
p.m. Moscow time (20:00 GMT) on Monday, it disappeared from radar
screens.
The plane was over the Mediterranean Sea about 35 km (20 miles) from
the Syrian coastline, Russia’s TASS news agency quoted the ministry as
saying in a statement.
“The trace of the Il-20 on flight control radars disappeared during an
attack by four Israeli F-16 jets on Syrian facilities in Latakia
province,” the statement was quoted as saying.
“At the same time Russian air control radar systems detected rocket
launches from the French frigate Auvergne which was located in that
region.”
The fate of the 14 people on board the missing plane is unknown, and a
rescue operation has been organised out of the Hmeymim base, the
ministry said.
Russia’s military operation in Syria, which began in late 2015, has
turned the tide of the conflict in favour of Moscow’s ally, Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad, in his fight against rebels.

LONDON (AP) — Julian Assange had just pulled off one of the biggest
scoops in journalistic history, splaying the innards of American
diplomacy across the web. But technology firms were cutting ties to
his website, WikiLeaks, cable news pundits were calling for his head
and a Swedish sex crime case was threatening to put him behind bars.

Caught in a vise, the silver-haired Australian wrote to the Russian
Consulate in London.

“I, Julian Assange, hereby grant full authority to my friend, Israel
Shamir, to both drop off and collect my passport, in order to get a
visa,” said the letter , which was obtained exclusively by The
Associated Press.

Metadata suggests that it was on Nov. 29, the day after the release of
the first batch of U.S. State Department files, that the letter to the
Russian Consulate was drafted on the Jessica Longley computer.

A Japanese submarine joined a military exercise in the contested area
of the South China Sea, in a move that could infuriate Beijing, which
claims most of the disputed waters.
Japan’s participation is the latest challenge to China’s military
build-up in Asia’s most strategic waterway.
In a rare announcement on Monday, the Japanese ministry of defence
confirmed the submarine Kuroshio, as well as the helicopter carrier
Kaga and two other destroyers, the Inazuma and Suzutsuki, took part in
an anti-submarine warfare exercise in the South China Sea on Thursday.
This was the first time Japan’s maritime self defence force has
confirmed a military drill by a Japanese submarine in the waters.
Kuroshio, which left Japan on August 26, visited Cam Ranh in central
Vietnam on Monday afternoon in the first port call by a Japanese
submarine to a strategically important military base in Vietnam, the
most provocative claimant against China’s military build-up in the
South China Sea.
Japan’s defence ministry did not give much detail of where exactly the
exercise was held, but Japan’s Asahi newspaper cited sources as saying
the Kuroshio joined the other three Japanese warships just southwest
of the Beijing-controlled Scarborough Shoal, a territory also claimed
by the Philippines.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang called on Tokyo to
“respect the efforts made by regional countries to resolve the South
China Sea issue through talks”.
“Act with caution and don’t take any acts that could damage peace and
stability in the region,” he said.
“Japan wants to contain China in the South China Sea, and this
exercise would be a negative influence on the atmosphere, but the
general trend of improving bilateral ties is based on mutual interests
of the two countries,” Zhou said.
“China is looking for increased cooperation and even to gain support
from Japan in the face of the trade tensions from the US, while Japan
also sees China as a stable market which could also become a leverage
in its foreign policy.”

The foreign policy of the United Arab Emirates offers a curious case
study for scholars of international relations: a small state with a
tiny population and historically little presence on the world stage,
but with outsized – and seemingly ever-expanding – ambitions. Over the
past decade, while consolidating its status as a regional financial
center and international business hub, the UAE has quietly become a
rising military power in the Middle East.

Since the watershed of the Arab Spring, the UAE has pursued an
increasingly assertive and interventionist foreign policy, the effects
of which are most evident in the Red Sea basin and Horn of Africa.
Here, the UAE has sought to become a major political actor,
maintaining a formidable military presence, handing out lavish
economic aid and taking on the role of kingmaker and peace broker.
Today, the UAE operates ports in four of the seven countries bordering
the Red Sea (Egypt, Somalia, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia), and military
bases in Yemen, Eritrea and Somaliland.

The UAE has been ratcheting up its economic activities in the Red Sea
basin as well. In 2000, Dubai government-owned, Dubai-based port
operator DP World won a 20-year concession to operate the Port of
Djibouti. Its efforts in Egypt began around a decade ago when it took
over the operation, development and management of Ain Sokhna Port,
crucial for being the closest port to the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
Last year, it signed an agreement with the Suez Canal Authority to
establish a company that would develop an area of 95 kilometers in the
Ain Sokhna area. In Saudi Arabia, DP World operates the South
Container Terminal at the Jeddah Islamic Port, and in 2017 it won a
contract to develop the entire port, in support of Saudi Vision 2030
and the $500 billion NEOM mega project.

These port deals were won through negotiation, but elsewhere the UAE
has employed more forceful measures. The UAE has used its heavy
involvement in the Yemen conflict (as part of the Saudi-led coalition
fighting Houthi rebels) to expand its geopolitical power in the
region. In 2015, UAE-backed forces seized the port of Aden – once the
British Empire’s busiest port – from the Houthis. In 2016, the UAE
captured the ports of Mukalla and Ash-Shihr, about 300 and 375 miles
east of Aden, respectively, as well as two strategically-located
islands in the Bab el-Mandab Strait. Emirati troops secured the Red
Sea port of Mokha in 2017, and are now engaged in an amphibious
assault on Hodeidah, the only major Yemeni port not yet under Emirati
control.

But why has the UAE shifted from being a buyer of security to a
supplier of it? It could be argued that the UAE’s foray into East
Africa is due to the importance of the Red Sea as a vital artery for
the transportation of the country’s hydrocarbon exports. Through its
two narrow chokepoints – the Suez Canal in the north and the Bab
el-Mandab Strait in the south – around 3.9 and 4.8 million oil
barrels, respectively, flowed every day in 2016. Control of seaports,
moreover, helps in opening markets, generating economic opportunities
and, in times of conflict, projecting military power.

As we scan the Blue Economy it is worth appreciating that Maritime
shipping is the lifeblood of Africa, with over 90% of the continent’s
imports and exports transported by sea. Today from Massawa, Eritrea
[admittedly on the Red Sea] to Djibouti, from Berbera to Mogadishu,
from Lamu to Mombasa to Tanga to Bagamoyo to Dar Es Salaam, through
Beira and Maputo all the way to Durban and all points in between we
are witnessing a Port race of sorts as everyone seeks to get a piece
of the Indian Ocean Port action. China [ BRI initiative], the Gulf
Countries [who now appear to see the Horn of Africa as their
hinterland], Japan and India [to a lesser degree] are all jostling for
optimal ’geo-economic’’ positioning. Overlay the Geopolitics and its
worth noting that the Geopolitics has become much more fluid. Fluidity
has been engendered by the spectacular arrival of Prime Minister Abiy
in Ethiopia [which is land-locked, of course but a key Future Taker of
Port facilities]

Tariffs have put the U.S. in a very strong bargaining position, with
Billions of Dollars, and Jobs, flowing into our Country - and yet cost
increases have thus far been almost unnoticeable. If countries will
not make fair deals with us, they will be “Tariffed!”

James Dean was an iconic American actor, who tapped into the universal
yearning and angst of nearly every adolescent human being with a raw
connection that has surely not been surpassed since. In one of his
most consequential films, Rebel without a Cause, two players (read,
teenage boys) decide to settle a dispute (read, teenage girl) by way
of near-death experiences. Each speeds an automobile towards a cliff.
A simple rule governs the challenge: the first to jump out of his
automo- bile is the chicken and, by universally accepted social
convention, concedes the object in dispute. The second to jump is
victorious, and, depending on context, becomes gang leader, prom king,
etc.

Since the beginning of 2018 the US has been reducing its balance
sheet, reducing the amount of Dollars and also increasing the interest
rate on those Dollars. The Dollar which had appeared like a Toy Gun
has suddenly metasized into an AK47. The Worry is what happens if it
metasizes even further? The Dollar is seriously weaponised. The US
economy is blowing hot. The risk is that US interest rates will go
higher than the market is currently predicting.

Global investors may be underestimating the headwinds to financial
assets posed by U.S. rates, they said. While the real rate on
three-month U.S. Treasury bills -- or the nominal rate minus inflation
(or inflation expectations) -- remains negative, Goldman forecasts the
measure will diverge from other real rates in the developed and
developing world over the next year-and-a-half.

Decent economic data from emerging markets helped mask the rise in
real rates earlier this year, but that “changed in April, when a
deceleration in EM data arguably exposed the risk consequences of this
divergence in policy rates,” strategists Charles Himmelberg and James
Weldon wrote in a report dated Sept. 16.

“As the rate of return on safe assets rises, the appeal of risky
assets falls, and we increasingly worry that rising trend in U.S. real
rates vs. global rates is ‘boiling the frog’ on risk appetite,” they
added. “An increase in the fragility of risk appetite is already
visible in EM, we would argue, but it logically extends to global risk
assets more generally.”

I have digressed. The Point is we all live in the real time our Faces
pressed against a high-frequency screen but a ten year sweep and
perspective is not something we afford ourselves in this seriously
fluid and real time World. As we look back, we can appreciate that G7
Central Banks basically flooded the World with Free Liquidity. This
Liquidity Wave suppressed Bond Yields and markets world-wide surfed
higher from Emerging to Frontier markets, crypto-currency, African
Eurobonds [Over the past six years sub-Saharan governments have issued
$81bn in dollar bonds]. The markets have been ''Like a patient
etherized upon a table'' for a whole decade. Its as if the World
became a Lehman to rescue itself from Lehman. Its been a decade long
''reverie''

Since the beginning of 2018 the US has been reducing its balance
sheet, reducing the amount of Dollars and also increasing the interest
rate on those Dollars. The Dollar which had appeared like a Toy Gun
has suddenly metasized into an AK47. The Worry is what happens if it
metasizes even further? The Dollar is seriously weaponised. The US
economy is blowing hot. The risk is that US interest rates will go
higher than the market is currently predicting. Punch-drunk markets
need to sober up fast. Hyperbolic and populist responses are inversely
correlated to the state of the real economy, note Nicholas Maduro's
Venezuela and President Erdogan.

Euro 1.1698
Dollar Index 94.48
Japan Yen 111.96
Swiss Franc 0.9618
Pound 1.3156
Aussie 0.7195
India Rupee 72.465
South Korea Won 1125.32
Brazil Real 4.1341
Egypt Pound 17.9190
South Africa Rand 14.9276

“But it is a curve each of them feels, unmistakably. It is the
parabola. They must have guessed, once or twice -guessed and refused
to believe -that everything, always, collectively, had been moving
toward that purified shape latent in the sky, that shape of no
surprise, no second chance, no return.’’

Actis’s $1 bid for the Middle East and North Africa private equity
operations of Abraaj Group is favored by investors in the funds,
despite higher offers linked to Persian Gulf-based firms, according to
people familiar with the matter.
Investors in the Abraaj funds would prefer to see the assets sold to
an international private equity firm as part of a liquidation of the
company, the people said.
The bid by London-based Actis is ranked ahead of offers from Abu Dhabi
Financial Group and Kuwaiti logistics firm Agility, which is making a
joint bid with Centerbridge Partners, the people said, asking not to
be identified as the information is private.
Actis’s expertise in running emerging-market funds appeals to the
investors in Abraaj’s funds, who are more interested in a credible
operational partner than receiving more money, the people said.
Separately, Brookfield Asset Management Inc. is expected to acquire
Abraaj’s Turkey private equity funds, and Colony Capital Inc. is the
favorite to buy Abraaj’s Latin America funds, the people said. Final
bids for Abraaj’s assets were made on Sept. 14, the people said.
Representatives for Brookfield, Actis and Colony declined to comment.
Once one of the most influential emerging-market investors, Abraaj was
accused of misusing investor funds, and liquidators are now selling
assets to repay creditors owed more than $1 billion. Previous attempts
to sell the fund-management business had collapsed after investors
rejected the proposals, people familiar with the matter have said.
Ahead of its collapse earlier this year, Abraaj was found to have
borrowed money from some of its own funds to meet operating expenses
without investors’ consent, people with knowledge of the matter have
said.
Actis, which invests in Africa, Asia and Latin America, was spun out
of CDC Group, the U.K. government’s development-finance institution,
in 2004. It has raised $13 billion and currently has 54 portfolio
companies, according to its website. CDC was one of the investors that
hired a forensic accountant to examine what happened to some of their
money in Abraaj’s funds.

Sudan’s new Prime Minister, Motaz Mousa, who also holds the portfolio
of Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, has said in his first
speech that he will adopt “a shock approach to address the imbalances
in inflation and the exchange rate of the Pound”.

Restrictions on how much cash is available to commercial banks are
among measures aimed at curbing rampant inflation and addressing an
economic crisis that could derail President Omar al-Bashir’s plan to
extend his nearly three decades in power.
Though banks have not announced specific withdrawal limits, some have
fallen in recent weeks to as little as 500 Sudanese pounds ($17.12)
per day.
“Even if this office is not secure from theft or from a fire, it’s
still better than putting it in the bank,” said Mahmoud, fishing a
small band of banknotes out of a filing cabinet.
Last week, 11 months after the United States lifted 20-year-old trade
sanctions, Bashir dissolved his government, citing Sudan’s “state of
distress and frustration”, and slashed a third of ministries to cut
costs.
At over 60 percent, Sudan’s inflation rate is among the world’s
highest, while its currency buys fewer than half as many dollars on
the black market — which has effectively replaced the formal banking
system — as it did a year ago. There are intermittent shortages of
fuel and food, and the scrapping of bread subsidies in January,
doubling the price, drew hundreds of protesters onto the streets.
In December, the International Monetary Fund said central bank
reserves stood at about $1.1 billion, or just enough for seven weeks
of imports — roughly half the three months usually regarded as
adequate.
“There was a moment of beautiful optimism at the end of last year,
when sanctions went away and we thought everyone is going to be all
over us like a rash in terms of wanting to invest,” said Sam Bodley
Scott, head of strategy at DAL Foods, one of Sudan’s biggest food
producers.
“But unfortunately, the local and domestic economic pressures, and the
challenges associated with that, have far outweighed the benefits of
the end of sanctions.”
Sudan’s central bank has devalued its pegged currency from 6.7 to
about 30 pounds per dollar in the last year, but the black market rate
is still lower, at about 42 pounds.
Currency dealers say dollar demand has increased as people convert
their cash to preserve value.
“There’s no confidence in the political system and the economy, and
it’s driven a lot of people to put foreign exchange in their homes and
mattresses and safes,” said Zuheir Saeed, CEO of Saeed Group, one of
Sudan’s largest conglomerates. “Now even housewives when they have a
surplus are putting it in dollars.”
“This is the worst economic crisis we’ve ever faced. I’m afraid we’re
facing a total collapse of the economy,” he said.
“People have reached their maximum level of anger and you can expect
anything after that. I don’t know what they will do.”

LOS ANGELES — On the morning of his first day of school, when he was
7, Abiy Ahmed heard his mother whispering into his ears.
“‘You’re unique, my son,’” he recalled her saying. “You will end up in
the palace. So when you go to school, bear in mind that one day you’ll
be someone which will serve the nation.”
Mr. Abiy, now 42, not only ended up in the prime minister’s palace. He
has also become the most closely watched leader in Africa: a man who
says he wants to to change his country from the inside out — and fast.
After taking office in March, he officially ended two decades of
hostilities with Ethiopia’s longtime rival and neighbor, Eritrea.
Beyond that, he started loosening a tightly controlled state-run
economy, pledged multiparty elections in a country long known for
jailing dissidents, and began wooing the government’s most strident
critics: members of the Ethiopian diaspora, who have long organized
insurgencies from afar. Leaders of a previously outlawed opposition
group returned to the capital on Saturday.
So are the risks: millions of disaffected youth, widespread poverty, a
violent struggle over resources among Ethiopia’s competing ethnic
groups, and a range of detractors from inside and outside the
government who are either threatened by too much change — or angry
that it’s not enough.
Mr. Abiy’s changes are a major departure for Ethiopia, which has long
relied on a government model that resembles China’s, emphasizing
state-led economic growth and a suppression of political dissent.
Representative Karen Bass, a California Democrat, who met with Mr.
Abiy in late August, lauded his changes but warned of the risks of
soaring demands
“He has delivered, but if life doesn’t change for everyone, people get
impatient,” she said. “People have unrealistic expectations.”
More than just changing the way Ethiopia is run, Mr. Abiy says he
wants to change the way Ethiopians see themselves.
“Build bridges, break down walls,” is a constant refrain in his
speeches, urging Ethiopians to step across religious and ethnic fault
lines to view one another as compatriots, instead of rivals.
“We just blame each other,” he said in the interview, barely
concealing his distress. “We just hate each other.” He calls it “group
thinking.”
Mr. Abiy became a Protestant. He speaks of “the ideals of love,
forgiveness and reconciliation.”
“It’s not political language. It’s religious language,” observed
Ephraim Isaac, an Ethiopian religious studies scholar who met with Mr.
Abiy shortly after he took office.
Immediately, he apologized for the killings of protesters by
government forces. He lifted the ban on opposition groups and pardoned
one of his country’s most high-profile political prisoners.
Peace with Eritrea was a priority. He asked those who had contact with
Eritrea — one of the most diplomatically isolated countries in the
world — to reach out on his behalf. He wanted to talk.
Mr. Abiy said help came from many foreign leaders, including the de
facto leader of the United Arab Emirates, Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed
Bin Zayed, who enjoys great influence in Asmara, the Eritrean capital.
Mr. Abiy said one of the biggest priorities for the crown prince was
peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea and he was careful to add that he
had also spoken to several African leaders.
“I’m not a king,” Mr. Abiy said. “My ultimate objective is to see
democratic elections in Ethiopia. If that happened, I’ll feel I
fulfilled my objective.”

A rebel group in Ethiopia said it will demand a referendum on
self-determination for the country’s troubled, gas-rich Somali region
during landmark peace talks with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s
government.
The plan by the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which has staged a
low-level insurgency in Ethiopia’s east for more than three decades,
comes as Abiy invites once-banned opponents to take part in elections.
The demands may aggravate a scramble for the region’s energy
resources, including natural gas reserves the government estimates
will eventually earn it $7 billion a year.
At stake are an estimated 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the
Ogaden Basin, where exports are due to begin 2021 via a pipeline to
neighboring Djibouti. A unit of China Poly Group Corp. has also
started testing oil deposits.
''We want to achieve self-determination recognized by international
law under the current Ethiopian constitution,” Ahmed Yassin Abdi, the
ONLF’s foreign secretary, said by phone from the Kenyan capital,
Nairobi. “We want our people to have a right to decide.” He said his
group has no preconditions for the talks. The region’s new president
expressed support for greater autonomy.
Ethiopia’s constitution enshrines the rights of people with “a large
measure” of common culture, customs, language, identity and
“psychological makeup” in an “identifiable, predominantly contiguous
territory” to seek self-determination and even establish their own
states.
“There are some areas where we agree,” Mustafa said in an interview in
the national capital, Addis Ababa. “Yes, we want more autonomy for our
region, genuine self-rule.”

Dollar versus Rand 6 Month Chart INO 14.9276
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDZAR&v=d6&t=c&a=50&w=1

Egypt Pound versus The Dollar 3 Month Chart INO 17.9185
http://quotes.ino.com/charting/index.html?s=FOREX_USDEGP&v=d3&t=c&a=50&w=1

Another emerging market bites the dust. #Egypt's main stock index
entered a bear market today, after falling more than 20% from its peak
in April. It's joined EM stock markets from China to Nigeria that are
in bear territory. @markets

Nigeria accused HSBC Holdings Plc of money laundering after an analyst
working for the lender said that a second term for President Muhammadu
Buhari may stall economic recovery in Africa’s biggest oil producer.

“What killed Nigeria’s economy in the past was the unbridled looting
of state resources by leaders, the type which was actively supported
by HSBC,” presidential spokesman Garba Shehu said in a statement late
Saturday. A bank that “continued until a few months ago to shield the
stolen funds of one of the leaders of the Nigerian Senate has no moral
right whatsoever” to criticize Buhari, he said.

Nigerian investigations revealed that HSBC had laundered more than
$100 million for Sani Abacha -- a military dictator who died in 1998
-- in Jersey, Paris, London and Geneva, Shehu said. A spokesman for
HSBC declined to comment.
Nigeria’s allegations against the London-based lender come almost two
months after it published a research note saying that a win for Buhari
in February’s elections “raises the risk of limited economic progress
and further fiscal deterioration, prolonging the stagnation of his
first term.” The note was written by David Faulkner, a
Johannesburg-based economist, on July 18, but was only widely
publicized in Nigeria last week.
“With the coming of President Buhari, it is not a secret that
corruption, corrupt individuals, banks and other corporate entities
that aided corrupt practices are under investigation for various
offenses,” Shehu said in the statement. HSBC “is also suspected in the
laundering of proceeds of corruption involving more than 50 other
Nigerians.”
The Nigerian government is facing intense criticism of its economic
management in the run up to the elections and several ruling-party
lawmakers have defected to the opposition. Nigeria was battered by the
2014 slump in crude prices and its economy is still struggling.
The main opposition People’s Democratic Party said on Sept. 12 that
HSBC’s research showed a Buhari victory “portends grave danger” for
the country.
“With the incoming election everybody is on edge and any analysis that
is used to sway negative public opinion will be squashed as quickly as
possible,” said Michael Famoroti, an economist at Lagos-based Vetiva
Capital Management Ltd.
“It’s possible the government is right in its claim but it completely
missed the point because the issue HSBC raised had nothing to do with
criminal or non-criminal activity. What is seen from their comments is
that they don’t have the answers to the criticisms raised by HSBC.”
HSBC has a representative office in Nigeria’s commercial capital of
Lagos, but doesn’t operate a full banking unit in the country, unlike
rivals such as Citigroup Inc. and Standard Chartered Plc.

HSBC research note dated July 18 said a second Buhari term “raises the
risk of limited economic progress and further fiscal deterioration,
prolonging the stagnation of his first term, particularly if there is
no move towards completing reform of the exchange rate system or
fiscal adjustments that diversify government revenues away from oil.”

Ghana Stock Exchange Composite Index Bloomberg +6.93% 2018
http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/GGSECI:IND

London: India’s biggest mobile carrier Bharti Airtel Ltd has chosen
UBS, JP Morgan and Citi to coordinate the London initial public
offering of its Africa business, two sources familiar with the matter
said.
In February Bharti Airtel Ltd said the holding company for its Africa
operations was looking at a potential IPO. The appointment of banks
for a London listing is a sign the process is progressing.
Bharti Airtel and the banks declined to comment. The company has not
given a timeframe for the listing to happen.
The sources declined to comment on the valuation of the Africa
operations but the business represents just over a quarter of the
revenue of the listed entity, which has a $20 billion market
capitalisation.
Bharti Airtel owns telecom assets in 14 African countries. In the
quarter ending June 2018, Africa revenue was Rs 20,100 crore and
earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA)
were Rs 6800 crore.
Globally the company has almost 460 million customers. In the quarter
ending June 2018, it posted revenue of $3 billion with EBITDA of more
than $1 billion.

Naspers today announced its intention to list its Video Entertainment
business separately on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) and
simultaneously to unbundle the shares in this business to its
shareholders. The new company will be named MultiChoice Group Ltd
("MultiChoice Group") and will include MultiChoice South Africa
Holdings (Pty) Ltd (and its subsidiaries, associates and/or
affiliates), MultiChoice Africa Holdings B.V. (and its subsidiaries,
associates and/or affiliates), MultiChoice Botswana (Pty) Ltd,
MultiChoice Namibia (Pty) Ltd, NMS Insurance Services SA Ltd, (the
aforesaid entities collectively "MultiChoice"), the African division
of Showmax B.V. (and its subsidiaries, associates and/or affiliates),
Irdeto Holdings B.V. (and its subsidiaries, associates and/or
affiliates) and Irdeto South Africa (Pty) Ltd (collectively "Irdeto").

Now let me return to the Eurobond Markets where Africa issued $81b
worth of bonds over the last six years. These markets trade
continuously. Essentially these markets are a continuous score-card on
the creditworthiness of the Issuer. its a relatively recent phenomenon
and something many Policy-Makers will not have considered adequately.
Balance sheets are maxed out.

There are no more ''Quaaludes'' and Policy Makers will no longer be
able to pop them. -

''In prescribed doses, Quaaludes promotes relaxation, sleepiness and
sometimes a feeling of euphoria. It causes a drop in blood pressure
and slows the pulse rate. These properties are the reason why it was
initially thought to be a useful sedative and anxiolytic It became a
recreational drug due to its euphoric effect''

Nairobi All Share Bloomberg -7.96% 2018
http://www.BLOOMBERG.COM/quote/NSEASI:IND

Nairobi ^NSE20 Bloomberg -20.00% 2018
http://j.mp/ajuMHJ

Very Frontier evening. Saw the body of a man who mistimed his run
across the Mombasa-Nairobi road (7th fatality that the taxi driver’s
seen this year), two power cuts, and a belly dancer from the Urals in
a Lebanese restaurant in Kenya