Renaissance Capital, which has operations in Africa, is in talks to buy brokerages in five or six African countries, the chief executive officer of the South African unit said Tuesday.
“I was in that meeting when CEO Stephen Jennings said the company was looking at five or six African countries,” Clifford Sacks said in a telephone interview. Sacks, who has been with RenCap, as the company is known, for three weeks, didn’t give further details.
RenCap, which started its African business in 2007, currently operates in five African countries including Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe. It last year participated in 18 transactions across 10 countries, including the $955 million sale of Central African Mining and Exploration Co. to Eurasian Natural Resources Corp., the brokerage said in a statement.
Stephen Jennings, the New Zealander who co-founded RenCap in 1995, returned this year to guide the firm’s expansion in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. Jennings said Africa will be the fastest-growing part of the world, yielding the highest investment returns over the next 20 years, the Financial Times reported.