We welcome you to our website with this article featured in The Asian Weekly magazine of March 06th – 12th 2015 Edition, Corner Section, on page 9.This feature is on our Managing Director Mr. Kunal Bid highlighting his take on the Securities business and also on striking the right balance between family life and work. The article gives a brief history of Bid Securities Ltd and the General Management Team of the BTB Group.
WHEN Paul Kavuma began approaching private companies in Africa a decade ago to suggest investing in their businesses and improving the way they were run, he was often shown the door. "They were offended, asking if I thought they were broke," says the founder of Catalyst Principal Partners, an east Africa-focused fund manager. Even when, after hours of explaining the merits of private equity, Mr Kavuma changed business owners' minds, many still struggled with the idea that within a few years he would sell the stake he had bought. "When we exited, some people thought we had lost confidence in them, rather than that we'd finished what we'd come to do," he says.
Pensions are big in Africa — surprisingly so. Sub Saharan pension funds comprise about $380 billion in total assets. To put that number on a scale, consider that it bests South Africa's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by about $30 billion, making it the third largest economy in Africa after Nigeria!
However, while private equity is a stalwart of pension investors around the world, very little African pension capital goes towards private equity. "There is approximately $29 billion of pension capital [in Africa] that could be invested into private equity," Nonnie Wanjihia, executive director of the East Africa Venture Capital Association, told AFKInsider.