Jubilee maintains market lead with 12.6pc of revenue

Jubilee Insurance has maintained its market leader position in the first half of the year, beating off competition from close rivals Britam and ICEA Lion. Jubilee’s market share stood at 12.6 per cent as at June this year, compared to the merged total of Britam and Real Insurance at 11.5 per cent.Kenya’s insurance industry saw gross underwritten premiums grow 15.3 per cent [...]

Britam abandons claim against Acorn in Sh5bn out-of-court settlement

Financial services group British American Asset Managers (BAAM) has dropped a multibillion-shilling claim it filed against property development group Acorn and seven of its affiliates following an out-of-court deal that will also see it relinquish a minority stake it holds in the real estate firm. The out-of-court settlement will see Acorn pay Sh5 billion to BAAM and also re-acquire four major development projects that Acorn had handed over to Cytonn – a rival private equity firm formed by the former Britam employees [...]

Uchumi secures CMA approval to dispose of Nairobi properties

The Capital Markets Authority has approved the sale of Uchumi Supermarkets’ assets in Nairobi as the retailer steps up efforts to raise funds to pay suppliers and finance operations. The retailer on Thursday said it had also included its Lang’ata property among the assets earmarked for sale. The other prime property that Uchumi intends to sell is its flagship Ngong Road hypermarket [...]

Kidero gets order to stop circulation of KPMG report on Mumias Sugar

Nairobi Governor and former Mumias chief executive of Evans Kidero has obtained a court order barring audit firm KPMG from further publishing its draft report on the status of the ailing sugar miller. Justice Joseph Sergon rules that being a draft report, KPMG should not have forwarded the document to Parliament as it was incomplete. Dr Kidero faulted the audit firm for presenting the report to Parliament, arguing that it was an incomplete document intended for Mumias Sugar’s exclusive use [...]

Regulator paves the way for NSE to unveil futures and derivatives trading

Capital Markets Authority (CMA) chairman James Ndegwa announced that the NSE has been granted a licence which will allow trading of futures and derivatives. The regulator has licensed the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) to introduce derivatives and futures [...]

Shilling gains further on foreign investor inflows

The Kenyan shilling strengthened further on Thursday on a steady inflow of dollars to be used for buying the country's high-yielding government debt. We've seen huge interest in the government securities from offshore investors," said a trader at one Nairobi-based commercial bank. The currency, down about 14 percent against the dollar in 2015, has weakened consistently over the last year due to a decline in tourism, a major foreign currency earner, and a high current account deficit [...]

CBK pledges to steer market into gradual interest rate decline

The Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) will steer the financial markets into a gradual rather than sharp fall of interest rates, it said on Wednesday. CBK governor Patrick Njoroge said the CBK would not want to bring the rates down quickly in a way that would destabilise the markets, meaning high rates are likely to linger for months. Dr Njoroge said the rates had overshot given that the Central Bank Rate (CBR) had only been raised by three percentage points [...]