By InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE)- Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote said on Tuesday Dangote Group has signed a $2 billion loan deal with  the Industrial Commercial Bank of China Ltd for two (2) cement plants, according to a Reuters report.

“The interest rate is okay, quite favorable with me,” Dangote said, without elaborating. “It’s for my two cement companies that we are establishing in Nigeria.”

Also, the report said the deal included China Export & Credit Insurance Corporation (Sinosure).

Shares of Dangote Cement Plc at the close of today’s trading on the Nigerian bourse declined 0.56 percent to N160.00 from N160.90 posted the last session; losing 0.90 kobo per share.

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JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) and federal authorities are nearing settlements over the bank’s relationship with convicted Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff, striking tentative deals that would involve about $2 billion in penalties and a rare criminal action, the New York Times reported.

The settlements would fault the bank for turning a blind eye to Madoff’s huge Ponzi scheme, the Times said, citing people briefed on the case. (r.reuters.com/kef45v)

JPMorgan spokesman Joseph Evangelisti declined to comment on the New York Times report when contacted by Reuters.

Madoff was convicted in 2009 of defrauding thousands of investors and is serving a 150-year prison sentence. JPMorgan has been accused of ignoring warning signs that Madoff’s business was a fraud, often to win more fees and commissions for services they provided.

The New York Times said the settlement with federal prosecutors in Manhattan would include a so-called deferred-prosecution agreement and more than $1 billion in penalties to resolve the criminal case.

The rest of the fines would be imposed by Washington regulators investigating broader gaps in the bank’s money-laundering safeguards, the paper said.

JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, recently reached a $13 billion settlement of a range of government claims over bad mortgage securities and struck another deal with regulators to pay about $1 billion for its “London Whale” derivatives trading debacle.

Source: Reuters (Reporting by Chris Peters in Bangalore; Editing by Supriya Kurane)

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* UBA seeks to invest $2 bln in Africa power projects

* Loan book growth up 14 pct in 6 months

Nigeria’s United Bank for Africa (UBA) has invested $700 million this year financing power assets in Africa’s second biggest economy and is looking to put $2 billion into power projects across the continent over the next three years, CEO Phillips Oduoza told Reuters on Tuesday.

Oduoza also said he expected the bank to grow loans by around 14 percent in the next six months, as it had done in the last six months.

 

 

Nigeria is reforming its electricity sector in a privatisation scheme meant to end the country’s chronic power shortages. President Goodluck Jonathan last week said bidders for state electricity assets had completed payments, clearing a major hurdle in the process.

“We have been financing different parts of the power sector both generation and distribution. We are looking … in Nigeria and across Africa with around $2 billion in the next 3 years,” Oduoza said on the sidelines of an economic conference in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

Of that, he said around $1.2 billion would be earmarked for Nigeria, a country suffering massive power shortages as demand outstrips supply, forcing those who can afford it to rely on diesel generators.

The state-owned monopoly power firm has been broken up into 11 generation companies and six distribution companies, all being sold separately to private consortia, for a total of around $2.5 billion.

UBA said in May it expected to grow its loan book by 30 percent this year, up from 6 percent in 2012, as it targets consumer and infrastructure financing.

“The top line loan growth by first half was about 14 percent … for the next half we are expecting about the same thing,” Oduoza told Reuters.

He added that African countries outside Nigeria continued to be a growing part of the business, expected to be about 22-25 percent this year, up from 19 percent last year.

Source: Reuters (by Joe Brock)

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