China-Africa: Standard Bank and ICBC Considering Nigeria, Uganda
By Renee Bonorchis
(Bloomberg) — Standard Bank Group Ltd., Africa’s largest bank, and its 20 percent shareholder, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Ltd., will visit four countries on the continent next month as the two lenders seek investments.
ICBC chairman, Jiang Jianqing, 56, will visit Nigeria, Botswana, and Uganda after visiting South Africa to co-chair the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town next month, Jacko Maree, Standard Bank’s Chief Executive Officer, said in an interview in Johannesburg today.
ICBC, the largest bank in the world by market value, and Standard Bank announced on May 12 the first of what they said would be many African partnerships when they arranged as much as $1.6 billion in financing for the expansion of Botswana’s Morupule B power station.
Standard Bank said in a trading update after its annual shareholder meeting today that it’s unlikely to match last year’s profit in 2009 as South Africa slips into recession and loan losses increase. In the four months to April normalized headline earnings, a measure of profit that excludes some one- time items, fell 14 percent to 4.1 billion rand ($499 million).
The bank fell 2.4 percent to 83.21 rand in Johannesburg trading today, giving the company a market value of 129.4 billion rand.
To contact the reporter on this story: Renee Bonorchis in Johannesburg at rbonorchis@bloomberg.net
(Bloomberg)