Sub-Saharan Africa Investment Banking Review for Q3 2018

• Sub-Saharan Africa Investment Banking Review for Q3 2018

Refinitiv, one of the world’s largest providers of financial markets data and infrastructure, today released the Investment Banking Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region review for the first nine months of 2018.

For the first nine months of 2018, SSA investment banking fees reached an estimated US$369.6 million, 7% less than the value recorded during the same period in 2017. In comparison, global investment banking fees were $76.6 billion.

Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) earned the most investment banking fees in the whole of SSA during the first nine months of 2018, with a total of US$32.2 million or an 8.7% share of the total fee pool. RMB also leads in the completed Merges & Acquisitions (M&A) and Syndicated Loans fee rankings.

IC Securities leads the Equity Capital Markets (ECM) underwriting fee ranking and Citi the Debt Capital Markets (DCM) underwriting fee ranking with a 14.1% share.

Inbound M&A is down 42%, driven by the lowest number of deals since 2009. Domestic and inter-SSA M&A totaled US$2 billion, down 64% year-on-year and the lowest first nine months since 2002. Outbound M&A is up 5% to US$4.4 billion.

South Africa’s overseas acquisitions accounted for 81.9% of SSA outbound M&A activity, while acquisitions by companies headquartered in Mauritius and Zimbabwe accounted for 15.3% and 1.5%, respectively.

SSA equity and equity-related issuance is down 43% year-on-year totaling US$4.9 billion during the first nine months of 2018. MTN Ghana US$734.5 Million IPO stand out as the biggest deal so far this year, PSG Group and Sanlam follow on offerings.

Standard Bank tops the SSA ECM league table for the first nine months of 2018 with a 19.4% share of the market.

SSA debt issuance raised a total of US$30.8 billion in proceeds during the first nine months of 2018, up 39% from the value recorded during the same period in 2017 and the best first nine months of the year since our records began.

South Africa was the most active issuer nation with US$9.3 billion in bond proceeds, which accounted for 30.3% of market activity, followed by the Ivory Coast and Angola.

“According to our most recent Sub-Saharan Africa Investment Banking Review for 2018, investment-banking activity in SSA decreased by 7% in the first nine months of 2018 compared to the value recorded in the same period of 2017,” noted Franita Neuville, Head of Advisory and Investment Management for Market Development for Africa at Refinitiv (formerly Thomson Reuters).

She added, “This decrease could be due to a number of reasons including, but not limited to, loss of investment appetite from local and international investors, companies and countries becoming more inward looking, and political instability across SSA.”