This week has again seen many wonderful activities in the money market. With the novel coronavirus pandemic being contained and many cities beginning to ease down lockdown restrictions so are funds finding their way into different companies around the world. This piece will summarize some the interesting deals that happened around the world for our readers.
We start with Open Society Foundations an organization that primarily involved in building a vibrant and inclusive democracies investing $25 million stemmed from its Economic Justice Program to two women-led investment funds in support of economic and gender equity efforts in Africa. According to Open Society Foundations “40 percent of Africa’s SMEs are women-owned, but only 2 percent of them succeed in accessing financing, resulting in an unmet financing need gap of approximately $20 billion”. To read more click here.
In Asia, Indonesian-based data management company Delman Delman raises US$1.6M seed funding. The funding was led by Indonesia-focussed VC firm Intudo Ventures in a seed funding round. The company plans to use the funds to make crucial hires of Indonesians nationals in Silicon Valley and also establish a Research and Development center in Surabaya, an Indonesian city. Click here to read more.
In an amicable way the South African asset manager Ninety One agreed to sell 24% of the shares it holds in Botswana’s consumer goods retailer, Kamoso Africa, to Botswana Development Corporation (BDC). Ninety One acquiring majority stake in Kamoso was the biggest private equity move that had ever taken place in Botswana. here
Chinese-based Tencent Holdings announced it will invest 500 billion yuan ($70 billion) over the next five years in technology infrastructure including cloud computing, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. The tech giant made this announcement after Beijing made a call last month for a tech-driven structural upgrade economy through investment in “new infrastructure” and a boom in demand for business software and cloud services. here
In a big move Private Equity Giant KKR plans to invest US$1.5 billion in Jio Platforms in India. This move will mark the fifth fundraising deal in a month by the Jio Platforms bringing all the investment into the company this month to US$10 billion. The US$1.5 investment secures 2.32 percent stake in Jio Platforms for the KKR. Read more here
The purchase of the 2.32 per cent stake in Jio Platforms for 113.67 billion rupees (S$2.14 billion) is KKR’s biggest investment in Asia, Mumbai-headquartered Reliance said in a statement.