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Guaranty Trust Holding Company, the parent of Nigeria’s biggest bank by market value, will list in London after selling $100mn in shares to investors, as lenders rush to complete the country’s largest bank recapitalisation in decades.
Segun Agbaje, GTCO’s chief executive, told the Financial Times that a sale launched on Monday would meet a central bank target for all banks to raise capital by March next year, as the Nigerian economy recovers from a series of currency devaluations.
Lagos-listed GTCO, which has a market value of N2,800bn ($1.8bn), is set to be the first Nigerian bank to secure a secondary listing in London next week, as the country’s lenders look abroad for capital and expansion after a 70 per cent drop in the naira versus the dollar in the past two years.
The UK market has suffered from a dearth of initial public offerings in recent years, and a steady stream of companies have been taken private or moved their primary listings to the US. Metal investment group Cobalt Holdings scrapped plans for its London listing last month and homegrown fintech Wise said it would move its primary listing to New York.
“I have heard all the things about business moving out of London,” Agbaje said. “But I still think that in terms of being a financial centre, London still remains extremely attractive, especially for an organisation like us which is predominantly African and most of the revenues coming from anglophone west African countries.”
GTCO joins Greece’s Metlen Energy & Metals and private equity-backed software group Visma in planning a London listing.
