News Release: Afreximbank Nets $107.5 Million From Capital Raising Effort

The capital raising exercise embarked upon by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) in September 2014 generated a total of $107.5 million dollars for Afreximbank as at 31 December 2014, exceeding the $100 million year-end target, the Bank has revealed in Cairo.

Afreximbank President Jean-Louis Ekra said that the new capital had enabled the Bank to better position itself to take advantage of the tremendous financing opportunities represented by the rapidly rising demand for its services and the quickening pace of Africa’s economic growth, while still maintaining a sound capitalization and credit standing.

The President explained that because of the Bank’s success in effectively delivering on its trade finance mandate across Africa, there had been an exponential rise in demand for its services, necessitating the capital raising effort.

Information released by the Bank showed that $77.3 million of the new capital came from share warrants booked under an equity capital market structure while $30.2 million was from paid-in capital received from existing and new shareholders of the Bank.

The warrants were invested by a Seychelles-based special purpose entity, which funded itself through an $85 million bond offering to investors, which would be convertible into Class D shares of the Bank. The Class D shares are scheduled for a stock market listing in the future.

The new capital raised by the Bank represents the first phase of a programme whose second phase aims to raise $300 million in 2015 and the third phase $100 million in the first quarter of 2016.

On 20 September, during their Fourth Extraordinary General Meeting in Cairo, Afreximbank Shareholders signed off on a $500-million share offering in the form of paid up funds that would be allocated on a pro rata basis to existing shareholders according to the level of their current subscriptions to shares in the Bank.

They also approved that the offer could be prefinanced by the Bank using a bridging or other financing arrangement on terms determined by the Board of Directors;

The Bank, consequently, put in place the equity structure to enable it to address immediate requirements while waiting for the equity from shareholders to come in.

Manal Mounir Hendy

Associate

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