We lead this week with one of the bigger private equity exits in Africa this year. Network International, a payments processor which listed on the London Stock Exchange early last year, has announced its intention to buy DPO Group. Once it closes, the $288 million deal will give Apis Partners and their fellow DPO stakeholders an exit from the firm.
Apis first backed DPO in 2016 and has supported the firm through a follow-on investment and a series of 5 acquisitions which has turned the business into a pan-African operator. DPO now has a presence in 19 countries and a client base made up of both blue-chip and local merchants.
Another exit, this time in Uganda. London-based private equity firm 8 Miles is selling its 42% stake in Orient Bank to I&M Holdings who will hold a 90% stake in business once the deal completes. Ketan Morjaria, a founder, is selling down his family's stake as well. Orient has assets of approximately $170 million and operates a network of 22 branches in commercial centres across Uganda, employing over 390 people.
In South Africa, RMB Corvest is backing a deal to take a stake in Switch, a 9-year old producer and distributor of energy drinks. The on-balance sheet investor is partnering with Mark Bowman, a former managing director of SABMiller Africa, and taking a significant stake in the firm which manufactures a wide range of flavoured energy drinks. The business has successfully built significant awareness of its brand in South Africa and neighbouring countries and is well-positioned to expand further within its current markets.
Norfund and IFU are providing debt financing to an East African safari operator whose revenues have evaporated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The DFIs are lending $9 million to Asilia Africa to help it weather the financial impact of the pandemic and preserve jobs as well as keep funding social and wildlife projects in local communities.
In another response to COVID-19, CDC Group is committing an additional $75 million to an existing trade finance facility with Absa Bank. The move boosts systemic liquidity across Africa and enables the continent's domestic banks to sustain the availability of trade finance and underpin supply chains during the crisis.
Two pieces of private equity fundraising news last week. BlueOrchard Finance held the final close for a private equity sub-fund of the InsureResilience Fund shareholders, which has now raised $80 million from both the public and private sectors. The emerging markets fund will invest growth capital in private companies and insurance companies that provide data, tech-enabled services and products to manage the risks and impacts being amplified by climate change.
The European Investment Bank is considering a commitment to an Africa-focused private equity fund sponsored by ARCH EM Partners. If approved, the ARCH Cold Chain Solutions East African Fund will be $20 million closer to its $100 million final goal which will be targeted at greenfield temperature-controlled supply chain assets in the region.
That's it for this week. As always, you can review these and other stories by clicking through to this week's preview edition of the newsletter.
Allan Cunningham is a senior media executive who has spent the last 15 years of his career working for some of the world’s most respected M&A and Private Equity media companies including Dow Jones’s publications Private Equity Analyst and VentureWire and most recently, The Deal. He has built a number of successful digital and event content businesses, both subscription and sponsor-supported, delivering information and content-marketing services to clients in the M&A and broader deal ecosystem. He recently struck out on his own and launched Rowayton Press, a multi-platform media company focused on the private capital opportunities in emerging and frontier
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