KEY POINTS:
New Zealand billionaire Stephen Jennings is turning his focus from Russia's oligarchs to new assets in Africa where his investment bank Renaissance Capital plans to double its investments to $1.3 billion this year.
Nigeria's Business Day newspaper reports Renaissance already has interests there after last month helping the United Bank for Africa organise a US$300 million ($398.85 million) share sale.
Jennings, a veteran of the privatisation deals of the 1980s era, initially went to Russia in 1992 to advise the Kremlin on that country's first privatisation auction.
He met Boris Jordan, an American investment banker of Russian origin, and when the pair realised how cheaply Russia was going to sell off its crown jewels, they started Renaissance in 1995 with former bankers from Credit Suisse.
They have since raised more than US$15 billion and helped Russia's oligarchs to accumulate huge wealth in the anarchic post-Soviet 1990s, managing to make some serious money themselves along the way.
Renaissance Capital, popularly known as RenCap, is part of a group which also owns a private equity firm, a consumer lending bank and asset management arm.
Renaissance Partners, the bank's private equity arm, already has US$500 million of assets in Africa, including a 25 per cent stake in Ecobank TransNational.
Renaissance plans to open a Dubai office to help channel oil money from the Persian Gulf into Africa.
Jennings said he was shifting his focus to African countries as a result of the declining capital gains on Russian stocks. He is also facing some serious competition in Russia from multinationals such as Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros.
He said Africa's longest expansion in more than three decades was fuelling demand for capital from overseas.
"Unlike Russia in the 1990s, it's not a matter of imagining that it might happen, it is happening," Jennings said. "With the exception of the Chinese, we will be one of the largest financial investors in the region."
The profit of Renaissance Capital, which includes the brokerage and investment bank units, rose 59 per cent last year to US$301 million and the bank's return on equity was 64 per cent.
Jennings owns a controlling stake in Renaissance and Forbes magazine said in November his stake in the group was worth more than US$1 billion.
Jennings has rejected Russian media reports that he might sell the bank. "The capital base is growing. It's more than adequate for the existing business," he said.
"The brokerage's equity was US$545 million at the end of last year.
"Middle Eastern investors will play a major role as financial investors in recapitalising the sub-saharan region."
- NZPA
