We are almost at the end of the month of August which Kenyans consider to be jinxed. So far national tragedies have included the annual floods in Budalangi and a village in Kakamega that was destroyed in mud slides, while Nairobi has had the occasional tremors continue since July.
Anyway;
lessons learnt from FT? The statutory manager of Francis Thuo Stockbrokers will begin paying off its clients (who had filed loss claims) from Monday 27th to September 7 – using money paid by new stockbroker Renaissance Capital.
This should not be the end of Francis Thuo and a comprehensive report and sanctions of the company’s management needs to happen. More so because, illegal selling of shares by brokers without permission of some unfortunate shareholders is still going on. Francis Thuo was not a robot selling shares. It had managers and staff who wilfully robbed shareholders of their investment. Has no investor reported them to KACA (even anonymously)? What’s more shocking is that the NSE wants to reward/gift the collapsed stockbroker with more money!
Kenya Reaffirms the IPO dreams of investors by almost doubling to in price on Day 1 after the IPO. The share price reached 18 shillings before settling at 15 – but the allocation to retail investors was measly 12%
Nairobi Wifi II
One drawback to finding a great hotspot is that you have to lug around a $500 laptop to/from parked cars in an anonymous bag – which you then wrap around your chair leg so it does not disappear. But an even worse situation is to arrive there and find that for some reason the network is offline and they can’t fix it till the next day.
Still it’s better than paying $11 an hour for internet access at a hotel, which is even more expensive than before. Ultimately the goal is to have home internet access which is a whole other story.
Here’s Safaricom ISP – in form of their new Bamba net service. It’s a plug & play USB modem which costs 6,000 shillings to connect and 2,000 ($28) per month for unlimited net usage up to 700MB then 10 per MB thereafter – and is available throughout Kenya
Parliament to scrutinize privatization: the Finance Minister has been ordered to gazette a privatization law passed by parliament. This will bring such measure under scrutiny of parliament like the Safaricom IPO, and (within the banking sector) – moves to privatize Consolidated and National bank, or anytime the NSSF wants to divest in shares.
KCB back to UK
KCB to reopen London branch to serve Kenyans living abroad.
KQ soars as Uchumi shrinks
Kenya Airways was ranked 99 among world airlines in terms of operations. And in the first quarter (April to June), the company results showed that with increased capacity (deployment of larger aircraft), they were able to carry 640,128 passengers (9% higher than 2006), but aircraft were less full owing to increased competition.
Meanwhile Uchumi has withdrawn franchise rights to Tesco who have closed their Uchumi branded branches (including the one at railways). from a KTN report
Recent grads can’t be MP’s.
Because the Higher Education Loans Board (HELB) wants them to clear their loan dues before they can run for public office including Parliament.
Jobs on Offer
most from the daily papers last week
Anti-illicit trade intelligence analyst at British American Tobacco. D/L is 7/9
Central Bank of Kenya: head of procurement, senior economist(s), manager forex bureaus, financial analyst, lawyer(s), executive director – Kenya school of monetary studies. Apply to the director of HR P O Box 60000-00200 Nairobi by 6/9
Constituency development fund: account managers for 41 constituencies including Makadara, Kamukunji, Starehe, Kasarani, Embakasi, Langata, Likoni, Mvita, Limuru, and Eldoret south . women encouraged to apply and the deadline for applications to cdf@wananchi.com is 21/9
East African Breweries: Buyer, Group Head compliance, indirect tax manager, group tax manager, direct tax manager, finance director, head of supply finance (Uganda) business performance implementation manager financial accountant(inter comp account), head of group procurement, procurement controller cost accountant advertising & promotion analyst service delivery manager
Principal legal officer at the east African development bank. d/l is 7/9
Branch managers at Family Bank. d/l is 5/9
HLB Ashvir: audit manager, audit seniors (Mombasa). Apply to audit@hlbashvir.com by7/9
Private sector development specialist at the IFC. d/l is 10/9
Kenya Airports Authority: auditor operations, auditor finance, auditor information systems. Apply through Hawkins associates
Kenya Commercial Bank: manager in non-electronic fraud, and investigator – forensic services. Apply to recruitment@kcb.co.ke by 7/9
Macroeconomic and financial management institute of eastern and southern Africa (Zimbabwe): director debt management program, program officer – external markets & financial markets development, program officer – financial sector supervision. Apply to capacity@mefmi.org.
Chief executive officer at the Privatization Commission of Kenya to be created. apply through Deloitte at esd@deloitte.co.ke by 6/9
Website editor/content coordinator at UNDP Somalia (Westlands office). Apply to registry.so@undp.org by 7/9
Banks-its good to see you support what many of us have been saying about brokers. I really don’t understand how some peeps think that because there is no financial damage, everything is hankdory. Look at Angro-Reasing, ati because the money was wired back no need to investigate further. Same story here. Yet, FT was just the one that got caught. Peeps complained about another broker which is named after the owner and it was very close to going bankrupt.
The brokers who insist FT gets a payout as goodwill are probably the same brokers who might want to be paid for looting!!!
So they want to set a precedent!
A small axe to the Safaricom IPO
By L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
I am not the daughter of a Big Man. Neither am I married to a Big Man — or even to the son of a Big Man.
I had the good fortune to have essentially middle-class parents who worked hard to give my siblings and me a good basic education. And I had the good fortune to have a mother whose citizenship made it possible for me to attend university, courtesy of the student loans system of her country.
The student loans covered fees and accommodation. But my parents couldn’t afford to send us much money — getting $100 on birthdays and at Christmas was like getting a windfall. So I worked to supplement the student loans, from the time I left Kenya at the age of 16.
Of course, I now recognise that, despite not being associated with a big man’s family, in comparison with the majority of people in Kenya, I am not only fortunate, I am actually extremely privileged.
But, despite that recognition, having worked since the age of 16, I also know the value of my money. I have worked for what I have. This is why, for instance, I get apoplectic with rage about corruption.
Under Kenya’s ridiculously constructed tax brackets, I fall into the same top tax bracket as Kenya’s Big Men. And I get nothing for it, having to pay privately for everything—including security where I live and medical insurance. But, my privileges taken into account, I certainly wouldn’t mind paying the amounts of tax that I do pay if I felt the money went to help those with fewer privileges, not to pay the obscene salaries of those who cannot be bothered to assure the House of a quorum sufficient to pass even 10 Bills a year — or to build the “bigness” of the Big Men.
The other night, some friends and I calculated the share of Safaricom’s reported Ksh17 billion ($253.7 million) profit that would have gone to Mobitelea — the company that, according to the Public Investments Committee, is irregularly in possession of no less than five per cent of the mobile phone company’s shares, meaning that there are apparently no records of Mobitelea having paid for that shareholding.
MEANING THAT MY TAX MONEY, which went into building and sustaining Telkom and Safaricom, was essentially given away. Meaning that, coming back to our calculation, the alleged owners of Mobitelea — the son of a Big Man and the son-in-law of another Big Man under the former regime and a Big Man in this regime — earned themselves no less than Ksh850,000,000 ($12.6 million) last year alone. From doing nothing at all, except live off the profits of having stolen from us. Ksh850 million off my back (and your’s as well). Again, I am incapacitated with rage.
And yet, the Treasury insists that Safaricom’s initial public offer will proceed, regardless of the outcomes of the PIC debate within the House or any court cases that might ensue.
What?!
FRANKLY, DESPITE OUR NEWFOUND fascination with IPOs, I don’t think a single one of us should put a single shilling forward. Those of us who do work hard and honestly deserve better. If shares in Safaricom could essentially be given away to Big Men, their sons and sons-in laws, then they can be given away to us. Why should we pay for them? They’re our property in the first place, which the government was meant to hold in trust for us. If it breached that trust for three of us, then it should share the love with all of us.
It might not seem like it, but there are, in fact, victims of corruption. Those victims are you and me — every single Kenyan who dutifully pays his or her taxes. I’m furious. I’m ready for a tax boycott — the residential associations led the way and it’s time to scale up their efforts. We need to say to hell with that IPO until the issues raised by the PIC have been satisfactorily dealt with. We need to be the “small axes” that Robert Nestor Marley talked about and cut down all those “big trees.”
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is a political scientist based in Nairobi
Kenya Re 333 shares only bah! IS ti already time to jump ship?
FT brokers are we rewarding them for dishonoring their clientèle we should be punishing them then again what do i know.
thanks to you and the commentors for educating me.
– I can’t believe these NSE guys, FT stole from the us and instead of punishing them; they want to pay them ksh.50 million more?! somebody tell me if I’m wrong, if you lost ksh.150 million to a crook do you pay him ksh.50 million just because somebody else compensated you? I’m loosing my confidence in this market.
– I think its time uchumi got delisted and sold to people who can manage it. The revival team seems not to be doing their work. I won’t mind if they lease to me the Kahawa Wendani branched which closed two weeks ago – It was one of the Tesco franchises. There’s a lot of market coz people were used to doing their monthly shopping there.
http://www.kainvestor.blogspot.com
MainaT: I think I have a good broker, but they did the same to me long ago.
It’s a crying shame – that even the B-Daily editorial today accused the CMA of not being there for investors cries, and only stepping forward when there’s money to be collected
coldtusker: do unto others as you want them to do to you
gishungwa: that much – 17% is not bad. The comments set the tone that FT are crooked
ka-investor: Invesotrs shoudl be given their shares back (not cash), FT managers should be charged in court and the excess Renaissance Funds should go to a compensation Fuynd (not run by the CMA)
– more on Uchumi later
Bankelele, thank you for not deleting that article by Muthoni.I posted it on several blogs only to see it deleted immediately. I know people in the blogosphere live in some form of utopia,(whereby they depict a sanitized dose of Kenya) but at least you’re among a few good ones left. Keep up the good work.
Nice to see decent broadband is not a million miles away. Safaricom is a good company. Maybe the best in Kenya, what do you think?
Was the Tesco mentioned the real Tesco? If so, sad news their withdrawing.
Yeah for KQ! That worldwide ranking is gonna be a boon for them. They still have a bad rap by some KTs I know, but as long as they keep the price reasonable on the KSU-NBI route, I’m in their corner.
Sijuicom is going in the right direction for a change. Their new rates are MUCH more reasonable that last year {from Swamp Cottage site}. Still, most of Kikuyumoja’s questions and requests still remain unanswered.
Anyone have experience with Popote Wireless? Supposedly unlimited Internet access for 3500/month.
black IS beautiful