London - Carlyle Group, the world’s second-largest manager of investment alternatives to stocks and bonds, said it may announce new purchases for its sub-Saharan Africa fund early next year as it forecasts the region will grow faster than all other areas except India and China.
“We’re looking at companies in Nigeria, South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia and Kenya as well as some pan-African businesses,” Marlon Chigwende, manager of the $698 million African fund, said by phone from London on Monday. “It’s a very busy time, but this year-end might be a little too soon for us to announce anything.” He declined to give more details because the information is sensitive.
Carlyle is targeting banking, consumer goods, manufacturing and business processing to add investments in five more companies from the four it currently holds, Chigwende said. Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa economies next year and greater stability in their currencies starting in the second half of 2016 will spark more private equity deals, he said.
The International Monetary Fund projects expansion in sub- Saharan Africa will be 4.3 percent in 2016, compared with 6.4 percent in emerging and developing Asian nations.
The fund advised commodity trader Traxys Sarl, which it acquired last year, to expand by buying South African commodity trader Metmar last month, Chigwende said.
The fund sold its minority stake in Dar es Salaam-based agricultural supply chain Export Trading Group to management in July after three years because it fetched an attractive price and the timing was right, he said.
BLOOMBERG