Tag Archives: private equity

African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM)

April 15, 2021 sarahcaddy Leave a comment

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS FOR AFRICAN PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTMENT MANAGER

African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM), one of Africa’s leading private equity investment managers dedicated to African infrastructure, has been a retained client of Gong’s since 2016.

Our corporate comms brief with AIIM focuses on talking about its extensive infrastructure experience in targeted press, concentrating on positioning AIIM as one of the leading renewable energy investors on the continent.

Activities also included announcing deal news, drafting LinkedIn content and carefully targeted op-ed writing on issues such as: the outlook for renewable energy in Africa, reform priorities in Nigeria’s power sector, the role of the private sector in plugging the infrastructure spending gap, and the importance of renewables in a greener recovery post-Covid.

Coverage has been achieved in international titles such as the Financial Times and Bloomberg, energy trade publications such as Energy Voice, Renewable Energy Magazine and Power magazine, as well as several target investment publications. Potential readership of Gong’s media coverage reaches an average of 55 million people each month.

Our work with AIIM resulted in Gong winning the global corporate communications brief for AIIM’s holding company, Old Mutual Alternative Investments.

Insight

2014 Oxford Africa Conference 23-24 May 2014

June 3, 2014 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

Tessa Wilson

The Spring bank holiday weekend meant a trip to Oxford to staff the 2014 Oxford Africa Conference. The 2-day event titled African Transformations was organised by Oxford’s two leading student-run Africa organisations: the Oxford Africa Society and the Oxford Business Network for Africa.

There was lots of interesting, direct and honest content and working with Gong’s financial services clients meant my ears pricked up for the ‘Investments in Actions: Private Equity Cases’ session with a discussion between members of CDC and The Abraaj Group, moderated by Private Equity Africa, Managing Editor, Gail Mwamba

There was a strong focus on the progress of African PE over the last decade, with discussion bouncing between the mass of opportunity and the overestimated risks. Yet the panel members were clear that one of the key constraints within African PE is finding superior talent, with David Easton, CDC, citing an important decision-making factor in his firm’s latest investment in the DRC as being its “good management”.

Talent, both at GP and portfolio company level, can be a major limiting factor for PE in Africa. Often not all the skills needed – financial acumen, management experience, African background and operational track record – can be found in one individual.

With such a positive view on other, more ‘obvious’ risks, both political and economic, it is the difficulty in pinning down elusive talent which is often underestimated.

Insight

Finding Alpha in Africa

April 22, 2013 rachel_eaton Leave a comment

Sarah Caddy

Joining the African Venture Capital Association’s Board of Directors’ meeting, I sit awaiting my turn to present on the crucial role communications has played in supporting the Association in recent months.

I am privileged to a sneak preview of some ground breaking research, collated over several months. Given the need – which we hear reiterated over and over again in our work with all our African clients – for independent and well-researched data on the African markets, I think it is worth summarising here.

First, Cambridge Associates, in partnership with AVCA, has developed the first African PE Performance Benchmark, which serves to help investors assess and participate in private investment opportunities in Africa. The findings of the benchmark were wide-ranging, as illustrated by the resulting media coverage, but a key headline was that African private equity funds outperformed US venture capital over last decade. All good news for Africa.

The positive stories didn’t stop there: AVCA and Ernst & Young also announced their joint research on African private equity exits. Private equity is a clear winner; the research shows that African PE firms are not only making excellent headway with generating exits, they are making strong returns in the process – almost double that of the JSE All Share Index.

When the research later broke to the packed hall of 400+ delegates here in Cape Town, Twitter went wild. The appetite for research of this kind is clearly huge from industry and media alike, with most of the afternoon of day two spent facilitating journalist calls and appearances on CNBC. It will be interesting to follow the impact these regularly updated reports have on the industry in months and years to come.

Read more on AVCA’s conference from The Economist’s Boabab correspondent, here.

CORPORATE COMMUNICATIONS FOR AFRICAN PRIVATE EQUITY INVESTMENT MANAGER

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