London investment bank picks Kenyan for top African job

By BRIAN NGUGI
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Summary

• Mr Ngumi moves to AMC from renewable energy firm Dream EP Global Energy Kenya, where he had been serving as a consultant for over two years.
• AMC focuses exclusively on the high growth private capital markets of Sub-Sahara Africa.
• Mr Ngumi formerly worked at Stanbic Bank and Standard Bank – in investment banking, as well as trade and commodity finance.

Africa Merchant Capital, (AMC) a privately owned boutique merchant bank based in London has appointed Kenyan executive Richard Ngumi as its new transactor in charge of originating trade finance deals into and out of Africa.

Mr Ngumi moves to AMC from renewable energy firm Dream EP Global Energy Kenya, where he had been serving as a consultant for over two years.

AMC focuses exclusively on the high growth private capital markets of Sub-Sahara Africa.

Mr Ngumi formerly worked at Stanbic Bank and Standard Bank – in investment banking, as well as trade and commodity finance.

His hiring follows news in December that the firm had secured $6.5 million (Sh716 million) in investment from Zebu Investment Partners (ZIP), a private equity fund which works to boost food security on the continent.

Since providing its first transaction in 2016, AMC says it has completed a number of deals in African countries such as Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya and Nigeria, where it has facilitated exports and imports for soft commodities including cocoa, cashew and coffee.

AMC had not disclosed the value and identity of deals made in Kenya to the Business Daily by press time.

The deals space has, however been negatively affected by the Covid pandemic, with firms going slow on new investments as they wait to see the longer term effects of the pandemic on the economy.

In the first half of last year the value of private equity deals on the continent recorded a 63 percent drop compared to the previous year, a report from the African Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (AVCA) showed.

The value of the 81 private equity deals reported stood at just $700 million.

The slowdown in PE activity reflected the wider economic uncertainty across the continent.

The Sub-Saharan Africa region is expected to fall into its first recession for 25 years as economic growth reverses and plunges due to the Covid-19 global crisis according to the World Bank.

Several distressed Kenyan firms in the Covid-19 hit travel, entertainment, energy and financial sectors could be snapped up by private equity funds eyeing quick bargains, Japanese law firm, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune said last November.