advice from a neighbour
President Yoweri Museveni gave some history, leadership, business, and investment insights in a speech when he opened the new Serena hotel in Uganda.
Some of the things he mentioned touch on the future prospects of Tiomin, Kengen, Sasini, Serena, coffee marketing, and relations with China & and other foreign donors. I welcome any recent Ugandan visitors to comment, since I am yet to visit the Pearl of Africa beyond Malaba (trip planned for 2007).
This afternoon I had an interview with a company about a website – and my concept was for the company to incorporate a blog to generate interest in the website and market the company better to its diverse customers, many of who accesses its products over the internet.
I mentioned that other corporations were doing this now and it gave a human face to their communications from CEO’s to customer service people.
I don’t know if my idea went over well, and I hope that I was wrong in my feeling afterwards that some of the panel appeared to have that we already have a website, blogu kitu gani? face.
After such a session, you are always very critical of yourself. During question time, I wanted to instead rush back to one or two points I had just remembered. And even taking the stairs down afterwards, I wanted to go back to the conference room and give them another 3 or 4 points that I had forgotten to mention that would strengthen my case.
Oh well, see how it goes. It was a very nice company, good to work with, and appears to have a nice work culture, and a very laid back (low bureaucracy) atmosphere.
Opportunities
from the daily papers this week
Manager at the Carnivore restaurant Nairobi. Apply to carnivore@carnivore.co.ke
Classic Camps: chief accountant, senior accountant(s), sales & marketing manager sales executive(s), executive assistant. Apply to classiccamps@accesskenya.com by 15/11
Commercial Bank of Africa: (i) internal audit manager [Ref: AM-BR] (ii) internal auditor [IA-BR] (iii) account relationship manager, corporate banking [ARM-CB] (iv) account relationship manager, business banking unit [ARM-BBU]. Apply to jobs@cba.co.ke by 21/11
Communications commission of Kenya: Supply, deliver, install and maintain solar energy solutions st CCK sites in Taiita Taveta, Isilolo, Suba and Thika districts. Submissions to solar@cck.go.ke by 13/12
Communications professional at DFID. Request an application form from dfid@adeptsystems.co.ke and reply to recruit@adeptsystems.co.ke by 1/12
Property valuer at Housing Finance. Apply to human.resources@housing.co.ke by 20/11
ILRI aka international livestock research institute. (i) Internal audit manager (ii) resource mobilization officer (iii) help desk administrator. Apply to recruit-ilri@cgiar.org by 24/11
Law Society of Kenya: advocates to consult on current professional development of lawyers, review the conduct process (standards & ethics) in place and make proposals on the same. Apply to lsk@lsk.or.ke by 24/11
McCann Erickson: (i) general manager (ii) account director. Apply to Emily.Mutua@scangroup.biz
National Museums of Kenya: (i) director, development & corporate affairs (ii) director, institute of primate research (iii) director, administration & HR (iv) director(s) (3) museum sites & monuments – for central, western and coast regions of Kenya. Apply to dgnmk@museums.or.ke by 30/11
Internal audit manager at Oserian.a apply to jobs@oserian.com by 22/11
Logistics manager at Oxfam. Apply to kenyajobs@oxfam.org.uk by 22/11
Practical Action aka intermediate technology development group: (i) program officer [technical support] (ii) program officer [financial support]. Apply to recruitment@practicalaction.or.ke by 24/11
Royal Media Services (i) ICT assistant (ii) ICT technician. Apply to hr@royalmedia.co.ke by 24/11
Sotik Tea (i) engineering manager (ii) field assistants/management trainees. Apply to info@sotikteas.co.ke by 24/11
Read an article from the Washington Post where the Chairman on the US Securities & Exchange Commission, Christopher Cox, is intrigued by the idea of using blogs to disseminate important corporate information.
“A 2000 rule known as fair disclosure ended a long-standing practice of companies providing significant information to stock analysts and other Wall Street insiders ahead of the public.”
Monday’s naked insider manipulation of Citi Trust shares should have been a wake up call for NSE on information and rules for prices and trades. Watch to see if there’s any recall or punishment stemming from the ill-fated trade.
This is very important because currently pension funds, Kenyans in the Diaspora, farmers and other new investors are all stepping into the market and things like the Citi Trust fiasco tend to undermine our confidence in shares. The share splits of EA Cables and ICDCI were self-fulfilling prophecies – share price shoots up about 6X in a few months, leading directors to announce splits to make them more affordable.
”when you attract foreign investors, you also attract criminals who specialise in economic crimes” – Tommy Prins of Deloitte
Related NSE needs EDGAR
New age for investors
The Nation’s Weekly Advertiser interviews the brains behind Eight.co.ke, Jijini Markets and Stock Detective who offer financial information on activities at the Nairobi Stock Exchange. Pick up this weeks’ free copy of the newspaper around town in Nairobi and hopefully the story will appear soon on their website. (ed: none are affiliated with the NSE)
Upcoming @ NSE
– Barclays Rumour: The Bank will announce a 5 for 1 share split and a 1 for 38 bonus. Note: I don’t own any Barclays shares
– Riba Capital tips on the next Mumias offer.
– Family Finance Building Society will offer 15 million new shares to account holders at 60 shillings each (minimum placement is 30,000 shillings). The ongoing offer runs to the end of the month and may overshadow the, rather low key, Eveready IPO (which starts next Monday) in the same way Equity Bank’s listing stole the limelight (and perhaps investor cash) from Uchumi’s re-capitalizations earlier this year.
Family Finance mimics Equity which also raised 500 million shillings in capital in August 2005. FFBS was expected to be a licensed as a commercial bank by June 2006 but that has likely been delayed by the Central Bank until they shore up more share capital.
Jobs
Africa Trade Insurance Agency: (i) assistant accountant (ii) administration officer. Apply to Recruitment@Africa-ECA.com
Auditors (8) at Constituency Development Fund national management committee secretariat of the Government of Kenya. Apply to cdf@wananchi.com by 4/12
General Manager at Dyer & Blair (Uganda). Apply to hcapjobs@wananchi.com by 17/11
Investigator (broadcast piracy) at Multichoice Kenya (DStv). Apply to nkariuki@kenya.multichoice.co.za by 20/11
Pan African Airways: captains for (B737 and F27), first officers for (B737 and F27) and training captains (B737 and F27). Apply to the chief pilot at orcom@worldline.co.za
USAID (i) Senior regional conflict management & governance advisor (ii) project development specialist. Apply to hrnairobi@usaid.gov by 17/11
Real Estate
KCB Houses: Simba Villas, Embakasi. Maisonettes at 4.6 million and Flats at 3.45 million shillings each.
Factory Complex: Industrial plot with 50 acres (out of which are occupied by 20 by factory) on a complex in Nanyuki – with all utilities connected, 5 godowns, and administration block.
Property Listings: New website of property listings. I’m still a big fan of Nyumbanet.
News
Econet are yet to pay for a mobile license ($27 million)
Safaricom: Network rollout equipment suppliers are invited to submit bids to the company. However no new dealers are being added – so stop bothering them!
KQ gets some competition on its popular and profitable Nigeria – Dubai and also Nairobi to China routes from new entrant China Southern which will fly from Beijing to Lagos, via Dubai from next year. From African Flyer – great airline blog.
McCann Erickson Kenya wound up – now a part of Scangroup
No more KR: Kenya Railways ceased passenger & freight operations on October 31.
Tea company to be taken over?
I went home one day this week and found that the maid had sold my entire stack of precious newspapers that I have meticulously collected over the last 5 years.
It’s partly my fault because I had separated and tied several stacks to be sold with instructions that the others not sorted /tied up were not to be sold. However when the newspaper buyers came round, she sold the entire lot – tied & untied newspapers and away went historic articles from the nation, standard, people, weekly citizen, financial post, defunct tabloids like Kenya confidential, Patriot and some foreign newspapers – pages & pages of business articles, company & executive profiles, election & referendum stories, career guides, strategic & other business ideas, bar-fighting, sexcapades and corrupt deals of politicians etc. – vital sources of information and references for bankelele – all gone to be recycled or to wrap/pack pieces of meat at the supermarket.
The last time I sold my newspapers was after the referendum and 60 kilos of newspapers netted about 855 shillings.
The gain this time was much less (about 500/= to go towards groceries) but the loss was priceless
Related: More maid drama.