Bank de Kigali postpones listing to Thursday

The Capital Markets Advisory Council (CMAC), Rwanda’s industry regulator said Bank de Kigali officials had asked for more time to prepare ahead of the first day of trading.

They also took into account Idd-ul-Fitr public holiday.

“The main reason was that the company requested for an additional two days so that they could prepare for the event,” said CMAC chief executive Robert Mathu.

The Islamic fete would be marked in Rwanda on Tuesday and in Kenya on Wednesday.

“The reason for this was to accommodate the Idd-ul-Fitr holiday. Since the team was not sure when it would fall, they we took a safe side. All investors were notified and there is no issue,” said Renaissance Capital vice president Solomon Mahinda on behalf of the group marketing and communications manager (Africa).

However, some local stockbrokers were caught unawares by the change of the date. The Suntra Investment Bank said that there was a breakdown in communication since it was still trying to find out from Bank de Kigali officials why the shares were not trading in the morning.

“We have not received any buy or sell order. Clients are waiting to see what the price will be once trading starts,” said Loise Warui of Suntra Investment Bank’s registration and operations desk.

The IPO was over-subscribed by 274 per cent as retail, foreign and qualified institutional investors (QII) made excess share applications.

All 6,636 retail investors in the region were treated equally and almost a quarter or 1,651 of these were Kenyans. There was also heavy demand from the QII pool.

“There were 83 QII applicants that wanted 126.6 million shares and were allotted only 30 million shares. Most were substantially Ugandan and Kenyan investors,” said Mr Mathu in an earlier interview. Bank de Kigali went to the market to raise Sh5.88 billion through the IPO.

The money is meant to minimise the maturity gap between its assets and liabilities, network expansion and loan book growth.
There were 300.3 million shares on sale valued at Sh19.62 each.

This will be Rwanda’s second stock exchange listing.

Bralirwa, the first IPO on the Rwanda Stock Exchange, saw its share rise by 62 per cent to Sh35 from Sh21 on the first day of trading in early January.

Since then its price has been trading at this level.

Analysts also expect that once attention on the listing has waned, activity at the Nairobi Stock Exchange may rise.
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