Carte Blanche with Perry

Though the economies of Zimbabwe and Kenya may be following different paths altogether, parallels can be drawn between the two Sub Saharan Africa countries. Like most African countries, the Financial Services sector largely remains virgin territory with huge upside potential for growth and development. The World Bank /Global Findex database which provides indicators showing how people in around 148 economies save, borrow and make payments among other things, highlights that only 23% of adults in Africa have an account with a formal financial institution. Commonly cited reasons for this trend, according to the same report were a lack of sufficient money to use an account; cost of having an account as well as the distance from financial institutions especially for the rural folk. It is against this backdrop that Kenya`s Equity Bank has shown its true genius. Founded in 1984 as Equity Building Society, originally providing mortgage financing for the low income population it gre...

Is it unusual for the share price of companies to move up one may ask? Most would answer no, and to most investors, a rising share price is desirable. However, suspicions may arise depending on the timing of those stock price increases. As the markets awoke to news that the Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe (SECZ) was conducting investigations of a few stocks after those counters experienced considerable gains in their prices on a single day`s trading. Fidelity (Assurance and Insurance) rose by around 53% to close at US 13.01 cents on the 30 th of December 2013. Similarly Zimplow (Industrial and Engineering) saw its stock rise by 33% at close of trading on the same day. Interestingly, for both of the counters, those gains in share price were on the back of relatively low volumes of trades of just 1000 and 96 000 shares respectively. A study of nearly 10 000 stocks on the New York Stock Exchange found out that on the final trading day of each quarter since 2...