Absa’s greater determination to put its money where its mouth is in Africa, after its separation from Barclays, is well known. Even in South Africa, where many of its peers have struggled during the Covid crisis, it continued to grow its corporate loan book under corporate and investment banking chief executive Charles Russon in 2020. But Absa’s preeminence as an African financing house goes well beyond its ability to deploy its balance sheet – and way beyond South Africa.
Its work in the telecoms sector is a good illustration of this. For example, Absa was bookrunner on a $750 million bond for Helios Towers in June 2020. That came after it acted as bookrunner on a $1.3 billion multi-tenor bond issue in September 2019 for IHS Towers, a firm for which it also arranged a $225 million revolving credit facility in the awards period. The bank also helped arrange a $247 million-equivalent term loan for Vodafone’s Ghanaian business and a $100 million multicurrency syndicated term loan for MTN Uganda.
Absa was joint lead issuing house in Dangote Cement’s N100 billion ($243 million) debut bond in Nigeria. It helped arrange a $3 billion debt package for the Nigeria LNG project and played a key role in the signing of Total’s $15 billion Mozambique LNG project financing.
In less well-known deals, Absa single-handedly financed a $25 million term loan for the rehabilitation of the Machipanda railway line linking the port of Beira in Mozambique to the Zimbabwean border. Also in the infrastructure space, it acted on a $230 million senior secured term loan for Genser Energy, one of the biggest independent power producers in Ghana.
In equity capital markets, Absa underwrote a R4 billion rights offer for The Foschini Group, later supporting an acquisition by the same firm. It was joint bookrunner on a R3.5 billion accelerated bookbuild for Harmony Gold to finance the acquisition of AngloGold Ashanti’s remaining South African assets; and on a R4.3 billion accelerated bookbuild for Growthpoint Properties. Both deals were important in the context of Covid-19’s disruption of the South African economy and capital markets.
