Dangote Sees U.K. Cement IPO Late 2019, Says Refinery on Track
Dangote Sees U.K. Cement IPO Late 2019, Says Refinery on Track
(Bloomberg) -- Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, plans to sell shares of his Nigeria-based cement company in London around September next year and said his oil refinery in Lagos is on track to produce fuel in 2020.
The 61-year-old is waiting for Nigerian elections in early 2019 and for a sell-off in emerging markets to pass before starting an initial public offering of Dangote Cement Plc, he said in an interview at the New Economy Forum in Singapore. He didn’t give details on how much he wants to raise or what percentage of the company he will sell.
About 15 percent of its stock is already listed in Lagos, where it has a market value of 3.5 trillion naira ($9.6 billion).
Dangote Cement is in talks about a potential acquisition of a company with operations in Kenya and Tanzania, he said in a separate interview with Bloomberg TV without saying the name of the firm.
Up and Running
The oil refinery, designed to process 650,000 barrels a day of crude, should start producing fuel in the first quarter of 2020 and be at full capacity within six months of that, he said.
“We’ll ramp up very quickly,” he said. “There are so many challenges but we are going very fast.”
Dangote is worth $11.1 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. As well as the refinery and cement, he’s investing billions of dollars in rice, sugar and dairy products and aims to buy oil and gas blocs in Nigeria’s Niger River delta.
To contact the reporters on this story: Alfred Cang in Singapore at acang@bloomberg.net;Francine Lacqua in London at flacqua@bloomberg.net;Paul Wallace in Lagos at pwallace25@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Dana El Baltaji at delbaltaji@bloomberg.net, John Bowker
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.