Old Mutual and Macquarie are joining forces once more to set up a second infrastructure fund that will target opportunities in Africa Infrastructure. The investors' first infrastructure fund, managed by African Infrastructure Investment Management, which Bloomberg reports had $1.2 billion under management at the end of 2014, is almost fully invested. The new fund looks set to launch during the third quarter of 2015.

Eskom, South Africa's state-owned power utility, should seek to sell equity to pension funds to help tide it over its cash flow crunch, according to the head of the African National Congress's Economic Transformation Committee. While privatizing power provision is not part of the government's policy, the National Treasury said last week that is was investigating options to increase private sector participation in power generation.  

Read more...

Currently achieving between 30% and 40% returns on its real estate portfolio, Ghana's state pension fund, the $1.7 billion Social Security and National Insurance Trust is planning to expand its allocation to real estate investments to 25% of the fund's assets, from 14% today.  Weak public market returns and a lack of public market investable opportunities are a key factor in the fund's decision to further diversify its asset mix.

Read more...

Bloomberg reports that Standard Chartered has hired advisors to help explore opportunities to divest part of its private equity portfolio, which would include stakes in companies in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa. Potential acquirers were not disclosed. Talks are said to be at an early stage, with no agreement on any structure of a potential sale agreed.

Rapidly growing numbers of middle class consumers in several East African countries has attracted private equity investment capital eager to benefit from the opportunity to tap into these underserved markets. As a result the retail landscape in the region is slowly changing as these multi-million dollar shopping centers get closer to completion.

A brief Q&A with Hurley Doddy, Co-CEO of Emerging Capital Partners and recently appointed Chair of the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, in which he shares his perspective on some of the oft-stated challenges private equity investors face in Africa.  

Last week saw the publication of Deloitte's M&A Tax Guide for certain key countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The guide covers 9 countries, addressing questions around tax and deal structuring, post-deal management and exits.