Almost two years to the day after announcing that he would sell his shares in the Britam insurer “within two years”, the businessman on Monday completed the sale of his stake in the Swiss reinsurance giant Swiss Re.
In a statement released yesterday, Britam’s management states “that [it] has been informed by one of its major shareholders, Plum LLP (the investment vehicle controlled by Peter Munga), that Plum has, on June 11 , has entered into a Share Purchase Agreement with Swiss Re Asset Management Geneva SA, whereby Swiss Re will acquire the 348,504,000 ordinary shares of Britam held by Plum “. The operation is yet to receive the final approval of the regulatory bodies concerned (the Kenya Financial Markets Authority, the Central Bank of Kenya and the Insurance Regulatory Authority), but if it is enacted, Swiss Re will then have 13 , 81% of the capital of the insurer listed in Nairobi and become de facto the second largest shareholder of Britam, behind the banking group Equity, founded in 1984 by … Peter Munga.
It would then be the end of an incredible financial adventure initiated in the summer of 2016, in the wake of the debacle of the sulfurous Mauritian businessman Dawood Rawat and his empire, the British American Investment (BAI). The main creditor of BAI, it is the state of Mauritius who then decided to agree with Peter Munga and its structure Plum LLC to sell him the stake of Mr. Rawat in the insurer Britam, and for an amount never disclosed . The Kenyan financier, however, had referred at the time to “a temporary acquisition of shares, […] the time to eliminate any uncertainty in the shareholding and to find an appropriate purchaser”. This is today done.
Nor was any figure advanced for the sale of Plum’s shares in Britam. Most analysts surveyed, however, believe that Peter Munga had to negotiate, as is customary in such transactions, a premium over the current market value of his stake, valued at 4.8 billion shillings (48 millions of dollars).
By the editorial staff of Financial Afrik
