Benin to Sell up to 40% of State-Owned Lender for $192.3 Million
Benin is selling up to 40% of its stake in Banque Internationale pour l’Industrie et le Commerce through an initial public offering to raise funds for development projects.
The West African nation targets to raise as much as 121.3 billion CFA francs ($192.3 million) by putting up for sale up to 23.1 million shares, the Finance Ministry said in a statement. EDC Investment Corp. is the brokerage firm handling the sale, which is priced at 5,250 CFA francs per share and opens on Jan. 13 through Feb. 28, it said.
The bank also known as BIIC would become the second state-owned enterprise to go public and list on the regional stock exchange based in Abidjan, the commercial hub of Ivory Coast. Loterie Nationale du Benin SA got listed on the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières on Dec. 13, following an IPO that raised $69 million for sports, cultural and social projects.
Benin, one of Africa’s biggest cotton producers has been trying to diversify its development financing post Covid-19, as rising yields in developed markets have raised the risk premium for frontier and emerging-market borrowers. Last year the country raised €350 million for environment, social and governance projects through an innovative structuring that lowered the cost versus markets by 300 basis points.
BIIC is owned 51.3% by the government, 13.3% by the state pension fund, 32% by a state development fund and 3.4% by the port of Cotonou. It was established in 2020 through a merger between Banque Internationale du Bénin and Banque Africaine pour l’Industrie et de Commerce. Net income more than doubled to 27.2 billion CFA francs last year, from the year before.
