Africa:
Investors should find it easier to get information about Africa’s blue-chip companies after the launch late in 2005 of a new African index, Ai ABC Index.
“Leading African economies are expected to grow at 5% to 8% a year, thus emphasizing the potential for African stock markets,” says Sunil Benimadhu, chief executive of the Stock Exchange of Mauritius, who was a guest speaker at the London launch of the index at the end of November. The SEM’s market capitalization has increased from $93 million in 1989 to $2.5 billion in 2005.
“Too little attention is paid to African stocks,” says Tony Coleman, associate director at the African Investment Advisory, a project advisory firm that has worked with content provider Emerging Africa and risk management company Nex-Rubica to create the index. “A good way to remedy this is to give the world’s financial centres a tool to measure African equity performance and volatility so that emerging market fund managers can compare them with other emerging markets.”
Russia:
Will the 2005 trend for Russian companies to list in London transform into a rush to list in Moscow in 2006?
That’s certainly what Oleg Vyugin, the head of the country’s regulator, the FFMS, hopes.