Aly-Khan Satchu

Investing in Non-U.S. Stock Markets

Dear Richard,

Thanks for the compliment. It made my morning.

I came home three years ago, having been in London for many years. What has really struck me in Kenya is the scale of the domestic shareholder base. It is widely expected to be 2m at the end of our current and biggest IPO Safaricom. This is an extraordinary outcome and actually a phenomenon. Today, Nigeria has 6 banks in the top 100 in the world. I really expect the African landscape to be something completely different in a very short space of time. Extraordinary things are happening and its all being compressed into a very few years.

Ex South Africa, I feel SSA is the last frontier. It was a previously very fragmented Continent with small pocket sized markets. The Mobile phone was the catalyst that triggered the aggregation of these small units into scale.

Lot of folk talk of Commodities etc but the next sharp trigger is coming from the Continent being plugged in to the global superhighway.

There might very well be a great arbitrage in identifying those markets that are set to get into these various new indices.



Take care
Aly-Khan Satchu
rich.co.ke

Investing in Non-U.S. Stock Markets

Dear Richard,

What is your definition of tradeable stock markets in relation to Africa and particularly in SSA?

There is a whole lot going on which appears not to be captured by your map?

Aly-Khan Satchu
rich.co.ke