TransCentury managing director Gachau Kiuna. FILE
Nation Media Group
By BD REPORTER
In Summary
- TransCentury disclosed in its latest annual report of land sale — whose value was set at Sh265 million in 2011 — last year.
Investment firm TransCentury
has sold prime land in Nairobi, signalling its lower appetite for real
estate as it focuses on the region’s power and infrastructure deals.
The Nairobi bourse-listed investment company
disclosed in its latest annual report of the land sale — whose value was
set at Sh265 million in 2011 — last year.
TransCentury had earlier indicated of plans to
build a mall with commercial office space of 24,000 square meters on a
six-acre plot in Karen, which has not been listed among its assets in
its latest annual report. But the firm indicates in the report that it
last year sold a piece of land acquired in 2006 for Sh46.3 million.
The sale came in a year when the firm also sold
its entire 95 per cent stake in Tanzania’s tea packaging firm Chai Bora
to a private equity firm.
“The investment property was disposed during the
year ended December 2012,” says TransCentury in the report, adding that
the investment firm will increasingly focus on mining, oil and gas
exploration and infrastructure developments (power lines, road and water
facilities).
Its reduced interest in real estate is a departure
from the rising activities of PE firms in the region’s property market,
especially the construction of malls.
The investors, including Actis, Renaissance
Capital and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), are pouring
billions into Kenya’s real estate to ride a housing boom fuelled by a
growing middle class.
But TransCentury is looking to the foreign
investors pouring billions of shillings in oil exploration across East
Africa and governments that are revamping power, road and their water
networks.
The firm last year sold its entire 95 per cent stake
in Tanzania’s tea packaging firm Chai Bora to Catalyst Principal
Partners to deploy the cash in the lucrative power and infrastructure
market.
In late 2011, it bought construction and heavy haulage firm Civicon Group,
which has operations in Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan and Uganda, where it
has built roads, petroleum refineries, pipelines and breweries.
No comments :
Post a Comment