Category Archives: Nairobi Jobs

Kutwa Tuesday: Reverse Safaricom IPO and other such tales

Safaricom needs a reverse stock split to get rid of their unhappy shareholders.
– Anyone who has less than 10,000 shares by December should be paid off by the Government or Vodafone at the IPO price of 5 shillings or market price, whichever is lower at the end of the year. Investors will not sell their shares at a loss and the least they can do is recoup their money from this mess (excluding their loans)

Kenol tweak: 36.67 million shares change hands worth 3.3 billion shillings on Friday. Meanwhile kenol/kobil stations have the most expensive fuel in Nairobi. Diesel has hit 101 shilling per litre ($1.55), while petrol is at 108, that’s about 6 shillings more than my station of choice.

Cola tweak: After enduring a difficult first quarter, coca cola is having a bit of a tumble in the second quarter due to to EABL’s Alvaro – at least in urban areas where it has become the non-alcoholic drink of choice for many previous soda (and juice) sippers. Coke has unleashed another multi-million shilling giveaway promotion to win back customers


alvaro cases at Nakumatt

Celtel tweak – More celtel confusion; The ink is not dry on posters for their newest promotion and already the terms have changed (for the better) [for customers to get free calls will now cost 65/= ($1) a day down from 99/=].

August will be a significant month for the mobile sector as Celtel switches to the Zain brand, Safaricom release their first quarterly results after the IPO, and Econet should finaly/hopefuly roll out operations.

Media tweaks: All journalists and correspondents practicing in Kenya must be registered with the Media Council of Kenya – and to do so they must each pay Kshs. 2,000, while foreign journalists will have to pay 10,000 ($154) per year [those on short term assignment of up to 3 months pay 5,000]. Amounts due by 30/9. Television radio and newspaper organizations also have to pay a quarterly fee depending on the number of media outlets

– Standard tweaks Two weeks after the launch of the new Standard, their strap line of the standard has changed;


new standard at launch


standard yesterday

Sunday Nation tweaks now has the best of best of Whispers – favorite columns of the late humorist Wahome Mutahi and some articles of the New York Times

From the blogs
– Pointer for Access Kenya shareholders to read
– There are only 60 lions (adult) in the Mara – but that’s an improvement by 50% from year 2001
– How bad are things for those who took IPO loans for Safaricom? Ssembonge shows that small investors are hurting more than bigger borrowers.
– Cautionary tales on life insurance from Tujuane
– Peer pressure: tales of GDP growth of rates of 8% in Ghana and
21% in Angola
– Link to a puff piece in memory of the former finance minister
-US Airways to remove all in-seat movies from their planes, while Emirates is targeting to remove all paper (in-flight magazines and publications) to save a ton of weight on the new A380 (to compensate for a ton of water for showers in first class (from airliners.net)

Opportunities

African Banker Awards. deadline for nominations if 31 July in the following categories: African Banker of the Year, African Bank of the Year, African Investment Bank, Best Development Bank in Africa, African Microfinance Bank, Best Issuing House, Most Innovative Bank, Deal of the Year, Socially Responsible Bank of the Year, Best Global Bank in Africa, Award for Gender Sensitivity

Jobs
from the daily papers last week
– Aircraft Leasing Services: captains, first officers for Embarer 135. als@als.co.ke
– HR director at Housing Finance. Apply through deloitte esd@deloitte.co.ke by 1/8
– MD of KCB Rwanda. Apply to recruitement@kcb.co.ke by 8/8
– KPMG Uganda: Internal Audit Services manager, Senior Internal Auditor, Internal auditor, forensic auditors. Apply to talentrecruit@kpmg.co.ke by 1/8
– Corporate affairs manager of Nation media group.
– Independent sales agents at Standard Chartered Bank. Apply to Susan.Ombati@ke.standardchartered.com by 31/7

Others vacancies at Kencall, Kenya Airways, and Family Bank [Credit officer, Procurement Officer, Works Officer, Accountant, Accounts Assistant, Administrative Assistant, Assistant Manager, Audit Manager, Branch Accountant]

Beach plots too good to be true? Lots of land available in Mombasa for real estate investment from Datkit agents including 3 acres creek in new Nyali with 120m sea frontage, 1.3 acres over looking Nyali golf club, 5 acre lots in kikambala, 14 acre beach plot next to Neptune beach, 25 acre beach plot next to kaskazi hotel with 168m beach front, 1/3 acre residential plots in shanzu (2nd row from beach)

Safaricom 7s

Safaricom IPO Day 24: Commentary – Strong market rebound. Someone is buying everything up below 7.00. We have based out. Deals 3,070 Turnover 305.67 million [$4.63 m] Average 6.94 High 7.00 Low 6.80 Last7.00 Volume 44 million shares Commentary and data from Rich.co.ke – NSE data vendor [with Free real time prices between 0930 -1500]

End of day : 64.65 million Shares, closing at 6.95 (up 2.2%)

Celtel Kenya gets a new CEO (7th?) [Rene Meza from Paraguay] as Celtel wins an award for best telecoms operator in Africa at the 2008 Business in Africa Awards held in London.

Rift Valley Railways gets two new shareholders [Prime Fuels and Mirambo Holdings]. Meanwhile both Kenya and Uganda governments are getting impatient and workers went on strike [they have now just got their June salaries]

The Vision 2030 Delivery Secretariat is seeking – director general, directors [social & political pillars, enablers & macro, economic pillar, and Strategy, marketing, empowerment and communication] chief officer [monitoring and evaluation] officer [project finance] project accountant, executive secretary. apply to psplanning@planning.go.ke by 31/7

Unilever Bails

Redux: Things I missed on Kutwa Tuesday

Business Daily: My favorite newspaper is cutting back on online content to charge subscribers $ 132 per year?

Unilever (UK) have applied to buy the under-valued shares from minority shareholders – and if they succeed they will de-list from the NSE. They are offering to buy shares at 62 shillings ($0.95) when they had previously traded at 45/=. Unilever owns 88.23% of the Kenyan subsidiary and need less than 2% to reach their target of 90% and are already within reach [shares from the NSSF or Jubilee and KCB pensions’ will tip them over]

Other exchange changeovers’ have taken places [Serena and CFC] but they companies have continued to trade at the NSE. The NSE / CMA are loath to lose companies, and with (now) 6 suspended companies, this will be interesting. Both Carbacid and BOC were knee-capped by the CMA and their shareholders missed out on the NSE bull run over the last three years [both shares have been suspended since December 2005!]

Streak over briefly: Safaricom has dominated the market since the day it was listed, but yesterday was the first day that another company’s’ shares were traded more than Safaricom since June 9th [KCB had 45.7 million rights traded at ~Kshs. 5 as the Government’s 51 million rights which it forfeited were snapped up by other investors]

Results of the Housing Finance rights issue were released showing that it was fully subscribed [raising Kshs. 2.37 billion], though not wildly over-subscribed (3%?). Either the offer, was not enticing, or people have gotten smart enough not to pay for more than they know they will get (80% of those who applied paid for only what they were allocated, 23% applied for more), those who over will get 74% of extras shares, while Equity and Britak will gets 100% of what they applied for [as the Government and NSSF did not take part]). The big winner are transaction advisers First Africa Capital who are set to bag about Kshs. 31 million [$476,000] from the rights issue

Interest rates have quietly crept up in 2008. The Barclays Bond which closed today had rates of 11.5% for investors as do standard chartered fixed deposits as new loans from Barclays and Equity have crossed upwards of the 20%.

Jobs
most from the daily papers this week

Akili Africa: entry level programmers, ERP implementation consultants, customer relationship manager. d/l is 21/7

Capital Markets Authority: ICT manager, assistant managers [research & product development, policy analysis & planning, procurement & logistics, finance, investigations, ICT, human resources] officers [senior compliance, investigations, senior investigations, customer service, senior policy analysis & planning, legal enforcement, legal framework, policy analysis & planning] analysts [senior financial, financial, stores] d/l is 25/7 by snail mail 74800-00200 to the Acting CEO

CEO of the Constituencies development fund : apply by 31/7 using snail mail

EABL: sales director apply to hr.recruitment@eabl.com

Pilots at Kenya Airways

Management trainees at KCB. D/l is 16/7

Nairobi Stock Exchange: surveillance officer (detect illegal behavior/trades) . apply to recruitment@nse.co.ke by 18/7

Sameer Africa: head of procurement, planning, logistics, ERP administrator, network & systems administrator hr@sameerafrica.com by 21/7

MY gOVErNment
a bit of wishful political – mini-reshuffle
Ministry of Roads: John Michuki
Ministry of Finance: Peter Kenneth
Ministry of Environment: Amos Kimunya
Assistant Minister Home Affairs: Chirau Mwakwere
Minister for Transport: Franklin Bett

Kutwa Tuesday: July 8 Briefs

away from the Grand Regency

Banking
– CFC/Stanbic merger/takeover formalized: As at June 1, the combined banking groups had assets of 78.3 billion shillings [$1.26 billion], deposits of 55 billion [$888 m] and loans of 38.9 billion [$627m]
– EABS Bank is now Ecobank Kenya
– Business Cubs: Bank of Africa will launch a small business Club for clients.
– Going international: building on the success of Safaricom’s M-Pesa, Vodafone will do money transfer between UK and Kenya challenging western union on phone transfers to India, Turkey, Egypt and South Africa (from Balancing Act Africa)

Investments
– Everyone lovers Safaricom; with 90% of the shares volumes since listing, the company has been added to the AIG index, NSE 20 and NASI indexes from July 1
– One month after Safaricom allocations, and despite paying an extra fee (30/= for a CDS statement) and making several trades, no new CDS statement has come in the mail

Media
– KTN joins the morning show club with Sunrise Live – coming a few months after Citizen TV and Nation (NTV) with their ‘breakfast shows’
– There’s a new relaunched Standard newspaper out today with new layout – but their byline For Fairness, Justice, and Prosperity is straight out of Superman

Energy
– Sweden/China joint oil search: Lundin Kenya has bought a share of the field assigned to China [Block 9, Kenya].

Travel
– Having moved to cut out travel agents, Kenya Airways will next offer hotel and car booking online at their website
– Rift Valley Railways (RVR) will raise freight charges up 14.5% and will charge a fuel surcharge based on average diesel cost and US$ exchange rate from 1st august

Other
– Kenya has no summer or winter, but the high court has a summer vacation from 1st to 8th August

Questions from the blogs
– A recap of the Kenya Re AGM
– Has tourism in the Mara recovered in 2008?
– Does EDGE or 3G after all?

Opportunities

Digital: KDN and the ICT Kenya Digital Village are offering free connectivity for digital villages and schools: the program targets rural cyber cafes and schools – who are willing to pay a set- up fee, and share some revenue earned with KDN

Investments
– The Barclays Bond closes tomorrow (9/7)
– KCB rights close on 18/7 – so far only NBK has offered loans for KCB rights (up to 90% finance)

Jobs
– EABL: logistics manager, governance improvement manager, group audit & risk manager, application support analyst, procurement managers (2). Apply to hr.recruitment@eabl.com
– The electoral commission of Kenya: registrar of political parties, internal audit manager, finance officer. D/L is 23/7 by snail mail
– Captains of B1900 C and D at executive turbine. Apply through info@xturbine.co.ke
– Film commission of Kenya: head of programmes, hear of HR & administration, head of finance, Programmes manager, marketing assistant, legal assistant, ICT assistant, executive secretary. Apply to ceo@filmingkenya.com by 18/7
– Keroche: distributors, area sales representatives. Apply to director.marketing@keroche.com by 11/7
– National Oil Corp of Kenya: risk analysts, internal audit assistant, procurement analysts, supply analyst
– Executive director of the privatization commission which became operational in January 2008. Apply (through deloitte) to esd@deloitte.co.ke (22/7)
– Resources manager at the Rockefeller foundation. Apply (though KPMG) to esd@kpmg.co.ke by 11/7

and
Marie Stopes: deputy director of male circumcision project (africa) [location: zambia} and male circumcision partnership deputy project manager [location: zimbabwe] d/l is 19/7

Scholar/internships
– Rhodes Scholarships (2) for Kenyans. D/L is 31/8
– World Bank young professionals program. D/L is 15/7

Uh Oh

Here we go again The Indian Ocean Newsletter reports

Just a few months after the collapse of the Nyaga Stock Broker , a large company heavily indebted to its clients, another stockbroker on the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) is in turn facing financial problems

Did the unintended collaboration of Coldtusker / Business Daily unearth the firm? This comes after several recent articles in the Business Daily on the renewal of broker licenses by the Capital Markets Authority.

Plastic cheaper: KCB lowering their credit cards fees. Annual fees for the KCB card will now be was 3,000 (~$47) from 4,000, while their Visa Gold will now be 4,000 (~63) from 6,000. Card penetration remain lows, I believe Barclays are the biggest company with 81,024 cards in 2007 (double 41,019 in 2006)

Entry-level opportunities (and expiry dates)
most from the daily papers last week
– Graduate trainees at the East African Portland Cement company (15/7)
– Management trainees at Unilever Kenya (7/7)
– Management trainees at Telkom Kenya (7/7)
– Young processionals program at the World Bank (15/7)

Safariom Day 16: Deals 3,939 Turnover 270.8 million shillings [$4.23 million] Avgerage 7.44 Closing 7.40 [+ 2.07%] High 7.55 Low 7.30 Last 7.45 Volume 36.4 million shares. Commentary: A constructive session. Bouts of indigestion are to be expected but those who had to flip [over leverage] have done so by now, given the volumes we have witnessed since the IPO. [Commentary and data provided by Rich.co.ke – Nairobi Stock Exchange Authorized Data Vendor]