By Stanley Opara with agency report

Friday, 3 Dec 2010

FirstRand Limited, South Africa‘s second-biggest financial-services company, said it planned to expand in Nigeria, Tanzania, Angola, Ghana and Kenya through acquisitions and internal growth.

The Chief Executive of the company, Mr. Sizwe Nxasana, said in Johannesbourg, on Thursday, that it was adopting a “progressively aggressive strategy” in Africa and once it had successfully entered those five priority countries, it might explore expanding in Zimbabwe, Uganda, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon and Congo.

Bloomberg quoted Nxasana as saying that FirstRand would continue to allocate capital to its businesses “that meet required returns, while any excess may be distributed to investors.”

The company already has operations in Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia.

FirstRand plans to expand its investment-banking, retail and insurance offerings across a continent that has more than one billion people. To pick up Asian trade flows as companies target Africa‘s resources, it has set up an office in India and signed a working agreement with the China Construction Bank Corporation.

FirstRand had received approval from the South African central bank to open trade-finance and investment-banking businesses in Kenya and planned to start operations in Tanzania next year, Nxasana said.

The company is the second-best performing banking stock on the five-member FTSE/JSE Africa Banks Index this year.

 

Source: Punch