Monthly Archives: April 2007

Reporting director performance

NIC Bank which has been recognized for corporate governance awards for financial reporting has now added a new level of director performance by publishing a scorecard of directors attendance of board and committee meetings during the year.

Director attendance is an important measure of their performance, and contribution to the company. They should also be measured by how many other boards they sit and their other executive commitments to determine if they add value to the company.

Neveready for Mara

This is a brief story about why there are no pictures to post from a trip to the latest wonder of the world – the Masai Mara

We were scheduled to leave very early one morning. So the night before, I went to the ATM withdraw some cash to buy some batteries for a digital camera. However, the ATM was acting up (no cash on Sunday night) and so I went to Uchumi with whatever cash I had left in my pocket. I didn’t have enough for any of the alkaline batteries (about 230 shillings for 4 AA) and so I settled for some “super heavy duty” Eveready batteries.

Early in the trip, I started taking some pictures of road construction work around Narok area, but soon the low battery prompt began to blink at the corner. I ignored it, as the batteries were new, and continued on taking pictures.

At the gate of the Mara, that garden full of almost every significant animal found on the continent – the camera conked out. The last picture the camera I was able to take was of a group of Masai ladies dancing and trying to sell some beads to a minivan of tourists. So much for the super heavy duty batteries, which only lasted for about a dozen pictures.

Great Mara: Driving through the Mara (no game drives or searching for animals), we were able to see buffalo, zebra, giraffe, waterbuck, baboons, monitor lizard or crocodile (dived into the bush near a river as soon as we approached), wildebeest, gazelle, warthog, and ostrich. The only ‘kill’ I saw was a secretary bird stomp a green snake and swallow it in about 3 seconds.

Also encountered, separately walking along the road was a hyena and a jackal, whose odd location could probably be attributed to tourists who had (illegally) thrown scraps of food at them. In addition, outside the park (which is not fenced), there were considerable herds of gazelle, wildebeest and zebra grazing close to herds of cattle watch over by Masai lads. There are no photos of these animals as I was neveready for the Mara.

Tourist economy/inflation: Back to the dead batteries. One peeve of domestic tourists is the inflated price of everyday goods sold at (and around) hotels and resorts. The batteries I couldn’t buy at Uchumi for 230/= were being sold at a kiosk outside the park for 500 shillings and at 700/= at the hotel shop. Eventually, I had to relent and buy them for 550/= at another shop we stopped at. These 100% mark-ups on the price of everyday items like toothpaste, slippers and batteries are a nuisance and should be cut down as the hotels/vendors don’t add any value to them.

Access Kenya IPO

IPO season is on again and this time its Access Kenya – a leading corporate ISP and telephony company.

Am yet to see the full prospectus, which should be an interesting read to see the trend of share capital and profit adjustment that is alluded to in the abbreviated prospectus published in the paper on Thursday – the day the IPO started.

The company has learnt from the Eveready listing and set out to limit shareholder numbers by setting a minimum investment for retail investors at a moderately high 50,000 shillings ($715).

Industry: The communications sector has so much happening now from – unified licences, the Wananchi ATC deal , Telkom SA/AfOL deal, Telkom Kenya re-engineering itself, EASSY vs. TEAMS cabling, fibre optics everywhere and of course Safaricom at the top of the food chain who have continually reinvested much of their record profits towards infrastructure expansion.

Investments in the sector are not cheap and with technology rapidly evolving, the 400 million shillings that will accrue to the company may not be enough for more than a few years at a company that starts off with a marginal balance sheet.

IPO results will be out in May and shares will be listed in June 2007.

Other opportunities

from the daily papers this week

Jobs

Coca Cola – East & Central Africa business unit: franchise marketing manager, hospitality manager, operations marketing representative, financial services manager financial accountant senior brand manage (2) revenue growth manager commercialization manage (2) strategy development manager, human recourse manager compensation & benefits manager quality improvement manager

Apprenticeships for mechanics at DT Dobie: applicants must be under 22 with good grades in maths, physics, English and apply in handwriting by 11/5 to DT Dobie Training Center p o box 30160-00200

Safaricom: head of customer management, head of retail. Apply to chro@safaricom.co.ke.

Soon you can dine in the skies as the Kenyatta International Conference Center has set out to revive its roof top revolving restaurant on the 27th & 28th floors of the building.

Kudos all round

Today is a day to give thanks for and recognize some notable happenings to empower investors.

Businss Daily: I was skeptical about the newspaper at the start but it has come through and is a great read, with all the major stories posted online (the site also has RSS feeds). I don’t know if/when it will break even and I also fear that it become ”online subscriber only once it reaches a critical number of readers.

Hisanet: Is one of the many upcoming platforms that aspires to offer online trading at the Nairobi Stock Exchanges (and so investors wont have to queue for IPO shares). It’s still not possible to trade in real time (i.e. you can’ place orders till nest day, unless you’re a major player) but this is something that has been lacking at most stockbrokers and will be a welcome avenue for Kenyans living abroad.

NSE site: The new web site of the Nairobi Stock Exchange has been a great improvement with daily price lists and some corporate news, conference reports and presentations and is also easier t navigate. The only drawback has been its massive PDF scans instead of simple text files. E.g. a one page statement on the collapse of Francis Thuo was 1.13 MB in size.

CMA wakes up: The collapse of Francis Thuo and alleged misdeeds at other stockbrokers has turned the heat up at the Capital Markets Authority who have now turned the heat on to other entities such as stockbrokers, insiders, and directors of companies.

In proposed new rules posted at the CMA site (which is also due for a spruce up) the CMA;

– Cracks down on misbehavior such as insider trading by raising possible penalties to 15 million shillings ($214,286) for companies, 10 million for employees and 5 million for directors. They will also have to reimburse their gains and have their names published. it’s about time
– Locks in management of companies coming up for IPO’s. While owners/managers at Equity, Access Kenya and Scangroup voluntarily agreed to stay on, the CMA has now formally endorsed that they can’t sell their shares for two years following listing
– The new rules also clear the way for other country shares to be cross listed on the NSE