South Africa

Gordon Dadds, a law and professional services firm, will begin offering a derivative documentation managed service as part of a newly launched consultancy business.

Barclays made a convincing start to its plan of reducing its stake in Barclays Africa on Wednesday night, with a successful block trade that netted $4bn of demand from what bankers on it said was a very high quality group of institutions.

A consortium including Bob Diamond’s Atlas Merchant Capital is still pursuing a potential bid for Barclays Africa, even after Barclays sold a 12% stake in it in a block trade on Wednesday night, and a senior regulator said a private equity bid would not be welcome.

Barclays has this evening executed a R13bn ($900m) accelerated bookbuild in shares of Barclays Africa Group, its separately listed South African subsidiary, as the first stage in its already announced plan to divest the bank. The trade was covered in 35 minutes and multiple times oversubscribed.

French firm Fnac will imminently launch syndication of its loan to buy retailer Darty, after winning a bidding war with South Africa's Steinhoff. Meanwhile, banks supplying a £920m loan for the thwarted rival await instructions.

The £920m loan for Steinhoff’s bid for Darty remains in place, although the South African firm has been outbid by French retailer Fnac.

Just two working days after Numis’s dashing block trade in Saga stock on Thursday last week, Credit Suisse brought another sparky, sole-managed deal to the market on Monday night, with a £1bn sale of SABMiller shares for Jan Kulczyk, the Polish billionaire.

Standard Bank of South Africa has grown its loan from $600m to $1bn in syndication, largely driven by demand from the four Chinese lenders in lead roles.

Steinhoff International, the South African furniture maker and goods retailer that has been on an acquisition spree, raised €1.1bn on Thursday with a convertible bond that bucked the recent trend of deals that have struggled, partly because it was the kind of simple, traditional structure investors like.

South African furniture retailer Steinhoff International has nearly completed syndication of its £920m loan to buy French retailer Darty, according to a banker close to the deal.

South Africa’s Investec Bank expanded the syndicate for its latest loan from 17-20 banks, including two Chinese lenders.

The Brics bank is to finally make its capital markets debut later this month by issuing green bonds in RMB with the proceeds to be channelled into energy and infrastructure projects, sources have told Emerging Markets, a sister publication of GlobalCapital Asia.