Goldman Sachs had a knockout year in Africa. The firm has invested heavily in the region, with a clear focus on a few core markets, notably South Africa, where it has moved to a larger office in Johannesburg and added foreign-exchange and fixed-income products that target corporate and institutional investors. In 2019, it joined forces with Investec to provide domestic equity trading services. A year later, it secured a licence to trade futures from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
At the heart of this is a small but growing roster of veteran bankers, led by Jonathan Penkin, head of the bank’s Johannesburg office and chief executive of Goldman Sachs International Bank Johannesburg Branch. Penkin’s aim is to compete with local financial services firms, notably FirstRand and Standard Bank, in key areas such as forex and risk management.
In June 2021, the bank hired Zoya Sisulu from South Africa’s largest lender by assets, Standard Bank, to head the firm’s financing group. Three months later it snapped up Simon Denny, former head of Africa banking at Barclays, and made him chief executive of sub-Saharan Africa and head of investment banking, South Africa.
The impact of the US bank’s far-sighted investment is already being felt. Goldman also secured this year’s award for Africa’s best bank for advisory. The Wall Street firm completed six deals in Africa ex-Egypt worth $42 billion for a 74.8% share of the market, according to Dealogic.
It played a key role in all key Africa-related M&A transactions over the year. A standout deal was the $39.8 billion share swap finalized by Cape Town-based Naspers and Amsterdam-based Prosus in August 2021, with Goldman acting as financial adviser to the Dutch investment group.
The US bank also advised Nordic insurance group Sampo on its £685 million purchase of the remaining 30% stake it did not own in UK insurer Hastings from South Africa’s Rand Merchant Investment.
Another notable deal, announced in January 2022, involves the sale of a majority stake in Johannesburg-based data-centre provider Teraco to US real estate investment trust Digital Realty for $1.925 billion. Goldman is financial adviser to Teraco.
The impact of the US bank’s far-sighted investment is already being felt
Elsewhere, the US firm ranked third in equity capital markets in the awards period, completing three deals worth a total of $341 million. In DCM, it completed six transactions worth $2.62 billion together, according to Dealogic.
Goldman was a bookrunner on two of the continent’s largest ECM deals last year: a $513 million follow-on offering by the South Africa-based investment holding company Pepkor in September 2021 and a $131 million follow-on sale of equity by another South African firm, Dis-Chem Pharmacies, in August 2021.
It was also present on many of the big DCM deals of the year. The US bank was a co-bookrunner on a $4 billion multi-tranche Eurobond sale completed by the Federal Republic of Nigeria in September 2021. The offering, which was four times oversubscribed, secured strong orders from Europe, North America and Asia, enabling the bookrunners to upsize the deal by $1 billion. It was also a bookrunner on a $1.25 billion Eurobond printed by Nigeria in March 2022.
