- Old Mutual Returns to Zimbabwe Market After Six-Year Trading Freeze
Old Mutual is returning to Zimbabwe’s capital markets after a six-year trading suspension, shifting its secondary listing from the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange to the US dollar-denominated Victoria Falls Stock Exchange in a move that could restore liquidity for thousands of shareholders and provide a fresh test of investor confidence in the country’s financial markets.
The South African-headquartered financial services group, one of Africa’s largest insurers and asset managers, has been unable to trade its shares locally since June 2020, when Zimbabwean authorities suspended Old Mutual alongside PPC and Seed Co during a severe foreign-exchange crisis.
Authorities at the time were concerned that prices of dual-listed shares were being used to calculate an unofficial exchange rate that increasingly competed with the government’s official rate.
Old Mutual became particularly important because investors could compare the price of its shares in Harare with prices on foreign exchanges to derive what became known as the Old Mutual Implied Rate. As confidence in Zimbabwe’s official exchange-rate framework deteriorated, the implied rate became an influential reference point for businesses and investors.
The wider Zimbabwe Stock Exchange reopened after the 2020 intervention, but Old Mutual remained suspended.
Six years later, the company has opted to migrate its Zimbabwe secondary listing to the Victoria Falls Stock Exchange, subject to regulatory approvals. The VFEX settles in US dollars, reducing some of the currency risk associated with trading on the domestic-currency ZSE.
The move is economically significant for both Old Mutual shareholders and Zimbabwe’s capital market.
More than 30,000 Zimbabwean shareholders have effectively been trapped in the investment during the suspension, unable to trade their locally held Old Mutual shares even while the company continued trading on exchanges outside Zimbabwe.
The VFEX migration should restore domestic price discovery and allow those investors to buy or sell their holdings again.
Old Mutual continued meeting its continuing obligations as an issuer during the suspension and paid dividends to shareholders, according to ZSE Holdings chief executive Justin Bgoni.
The decision is also a significant endorsement of the VFEX.
When the dollar-denominated exchange began operating in 2020, it had only one counter. By 2025, it had grown to 19 listed instruments, including 15 issuers on its main equity board, as companies increasingly sought an alternative to the currency volatility and valuation challenges affecting the ZSE.
Average annual turnover per VFEX issuer increased from about US$0.30 million in 2021 to US$7.00 million in 2025, while average annual securities traded per issuer rose from 1.30 million to 96.10 million over the period.
That development appears to have played an important role in Old Mutual’s decision.
The company has said its board monitored the VFEX’s growth during the years in which its Zimbabwe shares remained suspended and concluded that the platform had developed enough liquidity and scale to become a viable alternative market.
The shift also reflects a broader structural split emerging within Zimbabwe’s equity markets.
The VFEX is increasingly attracting dollar-earning businesses, exporters and institutional investors, while companies whose businesses are more heavily concentrated in the domestic economy remain on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.
By the end of May 2026, VFEX market capitalisation was approximately US$3.78 billion, compared with around US$2.73 billion on the ZSE, according to market estimates.
The group brings a major international financial-services name to the dollar-denominated exchange and could improve both its visibility and attractiveness to institutional investors.
For Old Mutual, Zimbabwe remains more than simply a secondary listing market.
Old Mutual Zimbabwe reported profit before tax of US$60.60 million for 2025, up 55.00%, while revenue rose 29.00% to US$194.80 million. Total assets increased 21.00% to US$1.79 billion, reflecting growth across banking, insurance and asset management operations.
That means the group is returning to the local capital market from a position of substantial operating presence rather than re-entering Zimbabwe after abandoning the country commercially.
Old Mutual continued to trade outside Zimbabwe during the six-year suspension, leaving locally held shares without an active domestic market price. When trading begins on the VFEX, the opening price will therefore have to absorb six years of changes in the group’s valuation, local investor demand, restored liquidity and Zimbabwe-specific risk.
The opening session is expected to operate through unrestricted matching of bids and offers, with normal daily trading limits applying subsequently. Old Mutual has cautioned that the resulting VFEX opening price may not correspond directly either to its final ZSE quotation before suspension or to prices on its other exchanges.
That could produce significant initial volatility. But the bigger question is what the return says about Zimbabwe’s investment environment.
The six-year suspension demonstrated the risks created when government intervention in currency markets spills into capital-market functioning. Shareholders retained legal ownership of an asset but lost one of its most fundamental characteristics: the ability to sell it.
Restoring trading therefore resolves a significant legacy issue, but it does not erase the episode.
For Zimbabwean regulators, the challenge will be demonstrating that rules governing listed securities are now sufficiently predictable to attract long-term capital even during periods of currency and economic stress.
For the VFEX, Old Mutual provides an opportunity to demonstrate that the exchange can offer more than dollar settlement and tax incentives — that it can deliver genuine liquidity and credible price discovery for one of the region’s largest financial institutions.
Old Mutual’s return should consequently be viewed as both a recovery story and a test.
Six years after one of Zimbabwe’s most prominent shares was effectively frozen out of the local market, investors are getting their ability to trade back.
Whether that translates into stronger confidence in Zimbabwe’s capital markets will depend on whether the institutional conditions that produced the suspension have changed as meaningfully as the exchange on which Old Mutual will now trade.
