$150m CBO West African Growth Private Equity fund debuts in Q2

CBO Capital will in this second-quarter (Q2) of 2014 launch the ‘CBO West African Growth Private Equity Investments Fund’.

CBO Capital said in its Q2 2014 outlook that the $150million West Afri¬can Growth Private Eq¬uity Investments Fund has a mandate to invest, using a top down/bottom up approach, in growing companies (SMEs) in the target sectors within the West African sub-region of sub-Saharan Africa.

“Fundraising for the fund will commence in Q2 2014, and it will be jointly marketed to both Nigerian, and interna-tional investors. The fund targets a final close of fund raising by Q1 2015,” CBO Capital added.

The fund will tar¬get sectors like Energy, Technology/Media, Real Estate Services/ Agri-business & Food Pro-cessing, Human Capital Services & Social Infra¬structure, and Manu¬facturing Value Chain & Import Substitution Plays.

With minimum in¬vestment of $1million, the target investors are Pension Fund Admin¬istrators (PFAs), High Networth Individuals (HNIs), Institutions, In¬surance Companies, and Diaspora investors.

Meanwhile, CBO Capital foresees that in Q2’14, performance of unlisted securities will be influenced by Private Equity (PE) fund raising, and regulation. On the former, they said there is significant interest in Nigerian opportunities by Africa-focused PE funds, adding that “Sev¬eral international funds are currently looking to capable local growth funds.”

On regulation influ¬ence, the noted that of Indigenisation and Pri¬vatisation activities by the Federal Government especially in transport, oil and gas, healthcare, real estate, and infra¬structure.

While reviewing the first-quarter (Q1), they noted that CBO Invest¬ment Management re¬mained an active in¬vestor in 2013, “exiting $51million, and commit¬ting or securing circa $39million in growth private equity opportu¬nities in 2013 alone.”