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Monday 30th of September 2019 |
30-SEP-2019 :: The End is Nigh. @TheStarKenya Africa |
The United Nations General Assembly #UNGA is a set piece Event that I always look forward to with a level of desire which always catches me a little off guard. #UNGA is one of the few Platforms where William S. Burroughs' edict “Smash the control images. Smash the control machine.” applies and just about everyone gets their Warholian moment "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes" said Andy Warhol. Fortunately, this Year, we were able to skip Bibi Netanyahu's ''Dog and Pony show'' because he had other things to focus on like trying to cobble together a Government and I am sure the entire World breathed a collective sigh of relief. The 16 Year Old Environmental Activist Greta Thunberg who of course set the tone with her powerful intervention “You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words. And yet I’m one of the lucky ones. People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing'' “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction. And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!'' Of course the ''How dare you!'' resonated with me because it is as Ryszard Kapuscinski wrote ''It is authority that provokes revolution'' President Bolsonaro pronounced ''You shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free'' and spoke of ''Trails of death and destruction. Ideologically infected human souls and biologically perverted children'' which I will just leave out there because his intervention in fact left me speechless. Boris Johnson spoke of ''Smart cities [which] will pullulate with sensors, all joined together by the “internet of things”, bollards communing invisibly with lamp posts.....[and asked] How do you plead with an algorithm?'' President Rouhani skipped a handshake with President Trump and instead delivered his message direct via Fox News, which was a very neat touch. President Trump evidently found it all a little overwhelming and had his security detail block a 16 year old Girl and then did a J. Alfred Prufrock and a ''Like a patient etherized upon a table'' impression. Imran Khan delivered a speech which was as effective as the reverse swing with which he used to bamboozle the World's best Batsman and this time he bowled Prime Minister Modi all ends up. TS Eliot wrote another poem captioned The Hollow Men which stars Mistah Kurtz-he dead Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow Now lets turn to the markets. Of course, Greta was referencing the feedback loop and the risks of die back where we enter a Phase of ''cascading system collapse'' precisely because of the negative spillover effects of the Hydrocarbon Century. So let me turn to the Houthis who two weekends ago struck deep inside the Kingdom with a swarm of Drones and are now reporting that they attacked the Saudi frontline and have captured “thousands” of enemy troops, including many officers and soldiers of the Saudi army, as well as hundreds of armored vehicles. “Operation ‘Victory from God’ is the largest military one since the brutal aggression began. The enemy suffered heavy losses ... and wide swathes of territory were liberated in only a few days,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam tweeted. 3 Saudi brigades fell in hands of Yemen’s Houthi fighters in Najran south of Saudi Arabia. Saudi propaganda was effective in bringing the price of Oil right back down after a 20% surge two weeks ago but a reprice higher is coming and this time its not going to ebb. No number of Patriot missile batteries can protect the House of Saud and its Salvatori Mundi now. The Enemy is no longer at the border, its on the inside. BUY OIL. The Dollar has been girding its loins all year and is set to explode. BUY THE DOLLAR. Safe Havens like GOLD and the new c21st Safe Haven BITCOIN, however, are trading like everybody is long and are very crowded and look set to deteriorate. BITCOIN could in fact fall as far as $1,000,00 where it was in January 2017. President Xi will have to let the renminbi go so SELL the RENMINBI. They will hold it steady this week because the CCP is celebrating 70 years of the People's Republic but when the Party is over, it will be an almighty hangover. And You can also SELL STERLING because the United Kingdom is crashing out of Europe. and the EURO as well where Parity is calling.
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05-AUG-2019 :: "What's your road, man?" Africa |
’ What’s your road, man? - holy- boy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It’s an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Where body how?” - The Key question is this. Can Prime Minister Johnson self-eject Britain? Can he be stopped? This is a political calculation. As I watched the Pound fall like a stone, I could not help wondering if this Sterling moment is precisely like it was in 1992, a no brainer.
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The Hollow Men Africa |
Mistah Kurtz-he dead A penny for the Old Guy
We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us-if at all-not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear Prickly pear prickly pear Here we go round the prickly pear At five o'clock in the morning.
Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long
Between the desire And the spasm Between the potency And the existence Between the essence And the descent Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is Life is For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
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Recommendation algorithms are some of the most powerful machine-learning systems today because of their ability to shape the information we consume Africa |
YouTube’s algorithm, especially, has an outsize influence. The platform is estimated to be second only to Google in web traffic, and 70% of what users watch is fed to them through recommendations. The platform is estimated to be second only to Google in web traffic, and 70% of what users watch is fed to them through recommendations. In recent years, this influence has come under heavy scrutiny. Because the algorithm is optimized for getting people to engage with videos, it tends to offer choices that reinforce what someone already likes or believes, which can create an addictive experience that shuts out other views. This also often rewards the most extreme and controversial videos, which studies have shown can quickly push people into deep rabbit holes of content and lead to political radicalization. Here’s how YouTube’s recommendation system currently works. To populate the recommended-videos sidebar, it first compiles a shortlist of several hundred videos by finding ones that match the topic and other features of the one you are watching. Then it ranks the list according to the user’s preferences, which it learns by feeding all your clicks, likes, and other interactions into a machine-learning algorithm. Among the proposed updates, the researchers specifically target a problem they identify as “implicit bias.” It refers to the way recommendations themselves can affect user behavior, making it hard to decipher whether you clicked on a video because you liked it or because it was highly recommended. The effect is that over time, the system can push users further and further away from the videos they actually want to watch. To reduce this bias, the researchers suggest a tweak to the algorithm: each time a user clicks on a video, it also factors in the video’s rank in the recommendation sidebar. Videos that are near the top of the sidebar are given less weight when fed into the machine-learning algorithm; videos deep down in the ranking, which require a user to scroll, are given more. When the researchers tested the changes live on YouTube, they found significantly more user engagement. Though the paper doesn’t say whether the new system will be deployed permanently, Guillaume Chaslot, an ex-YouTube engineer who now runs AlgoTransparency.org, said he was “pretty confident” that it would happen relatively quickly: “They said that it increases the watch time by 0.24%. If you compute the amount, I think that’s maybe tens of millions of dollars.”
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Yemen's Houthis say attacked Saudi border frontline, no immediate Saudi confirmation @Reuters Law & Politics |
Yemen’s Houthi movement said on Saturday it had carried out a major attack near the border with the southern Saudi region of Najran and captured many troops and vehicles, but there was no immediate confirmation from Saudi Arabian authorities. The Houthis’ military spokesman said in a statement that three “enemy military brigades had fallen” in the attack, which he said was launched 72 hours ago and supported by the group’s drone, missile and air defense units. Houthi-run Al Masirah TV quoted the spokesman as saying the Iran-aligned movement had captured “thousands” of enemy troops, including many officers and soldiers of the Saudi army, as well as hundreds of armored vehicles. “Operation ‘Victory from God’ is the largest military one since the brutal aggression began. The enemy suffered heavy losses ... and wide swathes of territory were liberated in only a few days,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam tweeted.
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16-SEP-2019 :: It is clear now that the "Yemen War has become Saudi Arabia's Vietnam Law & Politics |
It is clear now that the ''Yemen War has become Saudi Arabia’s Vietnam (or Soviet Union’s Afghanistan or indeed U.S. version of Afghanistan)'' @JKempEnergy and that the ''The kingdom has thrown everything into conflict but failed to achieve a decisive military advantage and favourable political endgame'' More worrying for the Kingdom is the second scenario were these Drones might have been launched within the Kingdom which would be signalling that the Houthis might well have teamed up with the Saudi Shia who represent up to 25% of the Population and have been ground down viciously by the House of Saud, characterised as Apostates and whose Leaders have been beheaded and crucified.
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Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book Shah of Shahs Law & Politics |
Shah of Shahs depicts the final years of the Shah in Iran, and is a compelling meditation on the nature of revolution and the devastating results of fear. Here, Kapuscinski describes the tyrannical monarch, who, despite his cruel oppression of the Iranian people, sees himself as the father of a nation, who can turn a backward country into a great power - a vain hope that proves a complete failure. Yet even as Iran becomes a 'behemoth of riches' and as the Shah lives like a European billionaire, its people live in a climate of fear, terrorized by the secret police. Told with intense power and feeling, Kapuscinski portrays the inevitable build-up to revolution - a cataclysmic upheaval that delivered Iran into the rule of the Ayatollah Khomeini.
Ryszard Kapuscinski in his book Shah of Shahs [a Book about the overthrow of the last Shah of Iran the Shahanshah ("King of Kings") and Aryamehr ("Light of the Aryans")]
Oil kindles extraordinary emotions and hopes, since oil is above all a great temptation. It is the temptation of ease, wealth, strength, fortune, power. It is a filthy, foul-smelling liquid that squirts obligingly up into the air and falls back to earth as a rustling shower of money. To discover and possess the source of oil is to feel as if, after wandering long underground, you have suddenly stumbled upon royal treasure. Not only do you become rich, but you are also visited by the mystical conviction that some higher power has looked upon you with the eye of grace and magnanimously elevated you above others, electing you its favorite.
Many photographs preserve the moment when the first oil spurts from the well: people jumping for joy, falling into each other’s arms, weeping. Oil creates the illusion of a completely changed life, life without work, life for free. Oil is a resource that anesthetizes thought, blurs vision, corrupts. People from poor countries go around thinking: God, if only we had oil! The concept of oil expresses perfectly the eternal human dream of wealth achieved through lucky accident, through a kiss of fortune and not by sweat, anguish, hard work. In this sense oil is a fairy tale, and like every fairy tale, a bit of a lie. Oil fills us with such arrogance that we begin believing we can easily overcome such unyielding obstacles as time. With oil, the last Shah used to say, I will create a second America in a generation! He never created it.
Oil, though powerful, has its defects. It does not replace thinking or wisdom. For rulers, one of its most alluring qualities is that it strengthens authority. Oil produces great profits without putting a lot of people to work. Oil causes few social problems because it creates neither a numerous proletariat nor a sizable bourgeoisie. Thus the government, freed from the need of splitting the profits with anyone, can dispose of them according to its own ideas and desires.
Look at the ministers from oil countries, how high they hold their heads, what a sense of power they have, they, the lords of energy, who decide whether we will be driving cars tomorrow or walking.
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16-SEP-2019 :: Drones Strikes Deep Inside the Kingdom. Africa |
the overwhelming geopolitical question is around the longevity of the House of Saud and its Crown Prince who is of course the Proud Owner of Leonardo Da Vinci's Salvatori Mundi which means Saviour of the World and according to Robert Baer has so. many enemies that he sleeps on his $500m yacht the Serene off Jeddah. The much commented on Orb is of no help now. If the Houthis have tapped into the Saudi Shia, the House of Saud in my opinion is on its last legs. This is a Big Call and needs to be understood for that. No amount of paid PR or kind words from Trump can finesse this. Over the Weekend, so many of the Oil Watchers I follow were saying we must wait for the Official Saudi comment. Let me tell you this for free. Saudi comment is worthless, irrelevant and paid for.
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23-SEP-2019 :: And by the way, my conclusion remains we are at a Peacock Throne Moment for the House of Saud Law & Politics |
And by the way, my conclusion remains we are at a Peacock Throne Moment for the House of Saud and that markets and folks tend to miss inflection points and therefore I have a supreme conviction around the Oil markets and am conducting my own operations and only on a need to know basis. The Shah of Shahs ended up in Panama all on his lonesome looking out to sea and there is another fellow not unlike the fictional Dean Jocelin with a $500m Yacht called the Serene who will most likely be looking out to Sea in the not too distant future.
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For arms dealers doing business in the kingdom, most visible overhaul to date has been consolidation of control over Saudi weapons purchases, and all branches of the armed forces, in the hands of MBS himself Law & Politics |
As its name suggests, the THAAD aims to intercept incoming short range or medium range ballistic missiles arcing down into the top of the atmosphere 25 to 90 miles up and no further away than 125 miles. The THAAD’s radar must therefore “acquire”–spot– the actual missile warhead, distinguishing it from nearby broken up pieces of its spent booster rocket or from decoys deliberately launched with it. The radar must then track and predict the future trajectory of the warhead itself, not confusing it with any of the accompanying bits and pieces. Relying on the radar’s predictions, the THAAD missile interceptor, once launched, must quickly accelerate to MACH 8 speed and guide with absolute precision to hit the target warhead directly, like a bullet. Near misses won’t do. After a series of early, disastrous failures, the Pentagon is now touting a fifteen out of fifteen string of successful THAAD launchings. Needless to say, not one of these tests has been against a ballistic missile target accompanied by booster debris or decoys, much less against half a dozen of such missiles fired at once. This alone should be reason enough for the Saudis to toss the deal, but even if the system could perform as advertised, it would have been entirely irrelevant as a defense against the September 14 Houthi attacks on Abqaiq and Kurais. The drones and cruise missiles employed clearly came in at low altitude, while THAAD is designed to operate against high altitude targets. The Patriot and Hawk batteries already in place are of course no better suited to confront low altitude threats, which are inevitably masked by ground clutter.
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05-DEC-2016 "We have a deviate Tomahawk." Law & Politics |
So much has happened in 2016, from the Brexit vote to President-elect Trump, and it certainly feels like we have entered a new normal. One common theme is a parabolic Putin rebound. At this moment, President Putin has Fortress Europe surrounded. The intellectual father of the new Zeitgeist that propelled Brexit, Le Pen, the Five Star movement in Italy, Gert Wilders in the Netherlands, is Vladimir Putin. In the Middle East, it is Putin who is calling the shots in Aleppo, and in a quite delicious irony it looks like he has pocketed Opec as well. However, my starting point is the election of President Donald Trump because hindsight will surely show that Russia ran a seriously sophisticated programme of interference, mostly digital. Don DeLillo, who is a prophetic 21st writer, writes as follows in one of his short stories: The specialist is monitoring data on his mission console when a voice breaks in, “a voice that carried with it a strange and unspecifiable poignancy”. He checks in with his flight-dynamics and conceptual- paradigm officers at Colorado Command: “We have a deviate, Tomahawk.” “We copy. There’s a voice.” “We have gross oscillation here.” “There’s some interference. I have gone redundant but I’m not sure it’s helping.” “We are clearing an outframe to locate source.” “Thank you, Colorado.” “It is probably just selective noise. You are negative red on the step-function quad.” “It was a voice,” I told them. “We have just received an affirm on selective noise... We will correct, Tomahawk. In the meantime, advise you to stay redundant.” The voice, in contrast to Colorado’s metallic pidgin, is a melange of repartee, laughter, and song, with a “quality of purest, sweetest sadness”. “Somehow we are picking up signals from radio programmes of 40, 50, 60 years ago.” I have no doubt that Putin ran a seriously 21st predominantly digital programme of interference which amplified the Trump candidacy. POTUS Trump was an ideal candidate for this kind of support. Trump is a linguistic warfare specialist. Look at the names he gave his opponents: Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, ‘Low-energy’ Jeb — were devastating and terminal. The first thing is plausible deniability (and some folks here at home need to remember those words). The second thing is non-linearity, you have to learn how to navigate a linear system (the new 21st digital ecosystem) in a non-linear way. When you launch a social media campaign where a 100 bots repeat the same thing verbatim, like Mombasa did last week, then your very linearity is a monumental ‘’look its me’’ sign. Beppe Grillo, the comic turned leader of the Five Star movement in Italy said: This is the deflagration of an epoch. It’s the apocalypse of this information system, of the TVs, of the big newspapers, of the intellectuals, of the journalists.” He is right, traditional media has been disrupted and the insurgents can broadcast live and over the top. From feeding the hot-house conspiracy frenzy on line (‘’a constant state of destabilised perception’’), timely and judicious doses of Wikileaks leaks which drained Hillary’s bona fides and her turn-out and motivated Trump’s, what we have witnessed is something remarkable and noteworthy. Putin has proven himself an information master, and his adversaries are his information victims.
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@jpmorgan defending @netflix via @themarketear World Currencies |
Heading into the qtr, we viewed NFLX’s 2H content slate as perhaps its best-ever & a key driver of the company’s ability to achieve its 2H paid net adds guide. We believe 3Q expectations have come down meaningfully in recent weeks, particularly Int'l where fewer than 5M net adds may now be expected.
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Marc Bernays Randolph (born April 29, 1958) is an American tech entrepreneur, advisor, speaker and environmental advocate. He is the co-founder and first CEO of @netflix World Currencies |
Randolph’s paternal great-granduncle was psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud and his paternal great-uncle was Edward Bernays, an Austrian-American pioneer in the field of public relations and propaganda.[9] Randolph spent his summers during high school and college working for the National Outdoor Leadership School, becoming one of its youngest instructors Randolph’s fascination with using computer software to track customers’ buying behavior would ultimately inform his decision to create a user interface at Netflix that doubled as a market research platform. Randolph wanted to replicate the e-commerce model pioneered by online bookseller Amazon.com. He had heard that digital-versatile-discs (DVD) were being tested in several U.S. markets, and he wanted to explore the concept of selling the compact new digital format online. He and Hastings could not find a DVD, so they tested the idea with a compact disc.[20] “Reed and I were in downtown Santa Cruz and we were saying, ‘I wonder if we can mail these things’,” Randolph said. “We went in and bought a music CD and went into one of the stationery stores … and bought a greeting card and stuck the CD in the envelope and mailed it to Reed’s house. And the next day, he said, ‘It came. It’s fine.’ If there was an aha moment, that was it.”[21] Hastings, Randolph’s mother, and Integrity QA founder Steve Kahn were initial investors in Netflix. Randolph named the company, designed its initial user interface and branding and acted as chief executive for the first year while Hastings attended Stanford University graduate school. Netflix launched on April 14, 1998 out of an office park in Scotts Valley, California.[22] Randolph designed the user interface to act as an online catalog of movies and a market research platform so that he could constantly test different versions to perfect the user experience. The data generated by these market tests led the team to three concepts that they combined in 1999 to create Netflix’s successful business model: a subscription-based service with no due dates or late fees and unlimited access to content, a “Queue” that allowed subscribers to specify the order in which DVDs should be mailed to them, and a serialized delivery system that automatically mailed out a DVD as soon as the previous rental was returned.[23] The subscriber data collected by the user interface fed a recommendation engine known as Cinematch, that helped manage the company’s limited DVD inventory by guiding subscribers to movies and TV shows that were in stock and generally away from new releases.[24] Randolph ceded the CEO post to Hastings in 1999 and turned to product development. He and founding team member Mitch Lowe tested a concept for a movie rental kiosk called Netflix Express that Lowe later turned into movie kiosk giant Redbox after Hastings rejected it as a line of business.[25] Randolph left Netflix in 2002 after helping guide the company through its initial public offering two years earlier.[15][26] He credited Hastings with successfully scaling the company to 93 million subscribers worldwide,[27] and said he preferred the start-up stage.[28] "At the beginning, it's very much triage. If there are a hundred things broken and you need the skill to pick the three you've got to fix, I'm really good at that. I'm not good at the other ninety-seven," Randolph said.
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27 NOV 17 :: :Bitcoin "Wow! What a Ride!". World Currencies |
“But it is a curve each oft hem 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.’’
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African eurobonds 3Q19 update @gregorylbsmith Africa |
The now $109.1bn African sovereign eurobond space has been growing rapidly. 21 African countries have issued sovereign eurobonds in US$ and euros, with maturities of up to 30-years. From the continent, South Africa and Tunisia issued sovereign eurobonds in 3Q19. The narrative has recently shifted from only issuance to include a growing track-record of eurobond repayment alongside efforts to reduce refinancing risk. However, African countries' debt levels are increasing faster than in other frontier markets. African eurobonds saw mixed performance in 3Q19 after a strong rebound in the first half of 2019 from a tough 2018. Here is an update from the third quarter of 2019. Third quarter 2019 eurobond issuance 3Q19 saw sovereign eurobond issuance from Tunisia and South Africa. Egypt, Benin, Kenya and Ghana issued in the first half of 2019. Taking 2019 issuance to date to $17.7bn (including $14.1bn and EUR3.2bn of paper). 2019 is already the second largest issuance year on record for African sovereign eurobonds. Tunisia came to the markets in mid-July for EUR 700mn due in 2026. The borrowing was more expensive (with a coupon of 6.38%) than when they last issued (a similar amount of 7-year euro was issued in February 2017 with a coupon of 5.63%). South Africa issued a twin-tranche $5bn eurobond issue at the end of September (with $2bn of eurobonds maturing in 2029 and $3bn in 2049). Better market sentiment helped South Africa secure a lower cost of borrowing. For example, the September 2019 issued 30-year paper has a coupon of 5.75%, versus a 6.30% coupon on the 30-year eurobonds issued in May 2018. No eurobonds matured in full in 3Q19, although Kenya and South Africa had paid back eurobonds in the first half of 2019. 11 African countries have now paid back sovereign eurobonds. Third quarter 2019 eurobond performance African eurobonds performed very well in the first half of 2019, almost across the board, as investor sentiment recovered from a tough 2018. 3Q19 performance was more mixed. Markets were favourable for emerging markets in 3Q19 in some respects, and bad in others. Favourable factors included two (25bpt) rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and the yield of US 10-year treasuries ended the quarter at around 1.7%, down from just over 2.0% at the start. Investors have been bullish about emerging market economies in 2019 and bond funds have received a net increase in funds. There were some outflows in August but overall in 3Q19 asset managers received additional funds to invest in emerging market bonds. Nonetheless, a collapse of Argentine eurobond prices in August hurt investors and that led to some contagion effects hitting sentiment for African eurobonds, especially those with long duration. The China-USA trade war also continued to provide uncertainty. Oil prices (Brent Crude) started the quarter at around $65/bbl and ended it at around $62/bbl. This compares to a drop of $5/bbl in 2Q19, and an increase of $14/bbl in 1Q19. The average cost of African eurobond borrowing remained static in 3Q19. At the end of 3Q19, average yields of African eurobonds were approximately 6.1% (the same level as they started the quarter). In the first half of 2019 average yields fell (150bpts) from around 7.6% at the start of 2019. Some countries performed better than others. Rwanda, Cameroon, Morocco and South Africa did best with average yields dropping slightly (as prices for their eurobonds increased). Tunisia, Angola, Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Namibia and Nigeria all saw their average yields (and cost of borrowing) increase. The average additional premium gained for investing in African eurobonds above assets deemed to be safer (US issued bonds) increased (50bpts) in 3Q19 from 4.4% points of yield to 4.9% points. This is possible when average yields of African eurobonds remained static because US Treasury bond yields fell. Third quarter 2019 snippets Rwanda performed best in 3Q19. The price of Rwanda’s only eurobond ($400mn maturing in 2023) increased (and the yield fell 47bpts), a move supported by their credit rating upgrade by S&P on 9 August (from B to B+). Negative bond yields in many European countries boosted appetite for investment grade African debt from Morocco, and South Africa (who still have one investment grade credit rating left). Ethiopia’s sole eurobond ($1bn due in 2024) yield remained fairly flat during the quarter versus peers. Although late in the quarter Moody’s shifted the outlook on their B1 rating to negative, as their concerns over state enterprise external debt heightened. Egypt eurobonds traded flat for most of 3Q19 after a strong first half of year. But the bonds prices fell a little at the end of September following anti-government protests in major cities. Confidence in Angola’s IMF supported reforms has ebbed a little bit in 3Q19, with average eurobond yields increasing 45bpts to 7.8% despite oil prices gaining a little. Angola has 3 eurobonds due in 2025, 2028 and 2048 with a combined value of $5bn. Fitch dropped the outlook on its B rating of Angola from stable to negative in 3Q19. Tunisia saw its average eurobond yield increase 67bpts to 7.31% as political uncertainty increased in 3Q19. Following the death of the President the national elections were brought forward to September 15. But the government still managed to issue a new eurobond in July. Zambia continues to stand out in the Africa space with the weakest trading eurobonds. Each of their 3 eurobonds are priced around 70 US cents on the dollar as investors see an increasing risk of default and fear they will not be repaid in full. Zambia’s credit rating was downgraded by S&P from B- to CCC+, following downgrades by Fitch in June and Moody’s in May. Republic of Congo signed an IMF program, after a long wait, in July 2019. Having re-profiled its Chinese debt portfolio and continued ‘good faith’ negotiations with commodity traders that have provided oil-backed loans. Moody’s upgraded Mozambique’s credit rating to Caa2 because they thought that the eurobond (currently in default following coupons not being paid since January 2017) might soon be (generously) exchanged for a new one with bond-holding investors. Niger was provided a new rating by Moody’s of B3. There are now 10 African countries with credit ratings and without having issued eurobonds.
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Mozambique targets $880 mln in tax from Anadarko takeover - report @ReutersAfrica Africa |
MAPUTO (Reuters) - Mozambique is targeting $880 million in capital gains tax from the takeover of Anadarko Petroleum by Occidental Petroleum, local newspaper O Pais reported on Friday. Anadarko led a liquefied natural gas project in the southern African country, but it was replaced by Total after the French oil major agreed to buy Anadarko’s African assets as part of the Occidental takeover. President Filipe Nyusi announced the capital gains tax target after he met Occidental and Total managers in the city of Chimoio, O Pais reported. In 2017, Mozambique sought $350 million in capital gains tax from Italian energy company ENI for its sale of a stake in the Coral South natural gas field to ExxonMobil.
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.@eni CEO searched, under investigation over dealings in Congo @ReutersAfrica Africa |
Italian oil and gas group Eni said on Thursday its chief executive, Claudio Descalzi, was under investigation for a conflict of interest issue over dealings in the Congo. In a statement Eni said CEO Descalzi had been served notice by prosecutors he was being probed for not disclosing certain information regarding relations between Eni’s Congo unit and a company called Petroservice. It gave no additional details. A source close to the matter said prosecutors in the Congo probe were alleging Descalzi had not disclosed the fact that his wife, Marie Magdalena Ingoba, was behind Petroservice. Eni declined to comment. “I firmly reject the alleged accusation. It is without any foundation,” Descalzi said in the statement. A lawyer representing Descalzi’s wife was not immediately available for a comment. State-controlled Eni is currently under investigation by Milan prosecutors for alleged corruption in the Congo Republic in the period between 2009 to 2015.
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Man pays for @MercedesBenz in $15 notes as Kenyans rush to swap old banknotes ahead of ban @AFP Kenyan Economy |
NAIROBI (AFP) - Last week, a man walked into a Nairobi car yard and paid for a luxury Mercedes with a mountain of 1,000 shilling (S$15) banknotes, desperate to offload cash that within days would be worthless. With a deadline looming before the Central Bank of Kenya bans all old edition 1,000 shilling notes, people with their fortunes stashed in cash are under pressure to find ways to jettison their money. A new print of the 1,000 shilling banknote, the largest denomination, was rolled out in June, with Kenyans given to Sept 30 to exchange their old bills at the bank or be stuck with bundles of useless cash. The operation is aimed at flushing out dirty money being hoarded by tax evaders, crooked businessmen and criminal groups. Large deposits of the old notes, embossed with the image of Kenya's founding father Jomo Kenyatta, raise alarm bells at banks and require paperwork to prove their origin. The central bank in June said there were roughly 218 million 1,000 shilling notes in circulation, but declined to say what proportion was being stashed as black money. Kenyan economist Aly-Khan Satchu said devaluing these bills works by "taking its owners by surprise". "Four months is a short period of time when you want to launder big sums of money," he said. "People who have that money will definitely try to save what they can." So people are getting creative, devising schemes to quickly unload small amounts of their cash while avoiding detection by the authorities. John, a car dealer in Nairobi, recalled his customer last week counting out thousands upon thousands of banknotes to purchase a luxury car worth US$74,000. "People want to get rid of their old notes, but they know very well that questions will be asked if they go put the money themselves in the bank," said John, who declined to offer his real name due to the nature of his business. "When I go to the bank to deposit money from a car sale, people ask for the papers from the sale, sometimes even copies of e-mails, but it never goes further." Other businesses are finding a lucrative side trade in washing 1,000 shilling notes through their tills - for a bit in return. "I was approached by a friend through another friend and we struck a deal. I get around 500,000 shillings every day to bank together with my daily sales," said a liquor shop owner who declined to be named in Hurlingham, a district near downtown Nairobi. "In return I get between 5 and 10 per cent, depending on the amount." The amounts being deposited are below one million shillings, the threshold at which banks required detailed paperwork under a new transparency policy imposed by the central bank in June 2018. One canny businessman in western Kenya dished out his cash in the form of small, interest-free loans of around 50,000 shillings. The amounts are low, so those exchanging the old bills avoid detection, and upon returning the debt his money is cleaned into new bills. "Nothing is written down, it is a gentleman's agreement," he said, declining to be named. Other methods involve sinking cash into real estate or investment funds, or businesses moving large volumes of money, several business people told AFP. But it's not all underhanded and hush-hush. One bar in the coastal city of Mombasa is offering to swop banknotes on behalf of drinkers, encouraging punters to spend big at their "Old Notes Send Off Party" being held the eve of demonetisation.
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betting firm @SportPesa halts operations due to tax hike @Reuters Kenyan Economy |
gaming industry achieved a combined revenue of 204 billion shillings ($2 billion) last year. Kenya introduced new gambling regulations, including a ban on advertising outdoors and on social media. This week, parliament voted an amended proposal raising the excise duty proposed in the 2019/20 (July-June) budget on the amount wagered at the time a bet is placed on all betting platforms to 20% from an initial 10%. SportPesa said it was “disappointed” by the move and that it would stop its operations until a “non-hostile regulatory environment” returned. Newspapers Daily Nation and Standard reported that a second firm, Betin Kenya, had also ended its operations, citing the heavy taxation as the main reason
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