Its now official, every IPO in kenya will have more takers than there are shares. even kenya re which had so much mystery has been oversubscribed. but like i thought, the number of shares were few and you saw that coming. in fact the demand was more than that of kengen. its disappointing though that investors may end up with only 100 shares or about 1000 shillings worth of investment meaning they will be refunded at least some 18K shillings! what a waste of time and oportunity!
if this then how about safaricom? how will they ensure that these little money refund headaches dont happen?
elsewhere i discovered that nakumatt actually did their homework about the 24 hour thing. i went to the late night shop to get some light bulbs and to my shock and awe, i found that there was absolutely no parking! even the new pavements that nakumatt constructed the other day were packed with cars and some were on the road. there was no space all the way up to the new westgate. so there are shopers at night as well!
OD: As long as Nakumatt provides security...
ReplyDeleteThe over-subscription was muted compared to KenGen since many retail investors applied for the bare minimum...
At least SafCon will have many more shares offered... I believe Kenyans will rally to buy SafCon...
I do NOT support selling SafCon shares to foreigners esp Tanzanians at a discount!
I figured that since oversubscription will be the order of the day, I won't waste time queuing at the stock brokers or hassling for refunds. I'll be buying straight from the market.
ReplyDeleteFor safaricom, I think we can safely assume oversubscription of the highest kind.
I'm jazzed there was no parking at Nakumatt. Seems like this 24hour idea is catching on well.
A small axe to the Safaricom IPO
ReplyDeleteBy L. MUTHONI WANYEKI
I am not the daughter of a Big Man. Neither am I married to a Big Man — or even to the son of a Big Man.
I had the good fortune to have essentially middle-class parents who worked hard to give my siblings and me a good basic education. And I had the good fortune to have a mother whose citizenship made it possible for me to attend university, courtesy of the student loans system of her country.
The student loans covered fees and accommodation. But my parents couldn’t afford to send us much money — getting $100 on birthdays and at Christmas was like getting a windfall. So I worked to supplement the student loans, from the time I left Kenya at the age of 16.
Of course, I now recognise that, despite not being associated with a big man’s family, in comparison with the majority of people in Kenya, I am not only fortunate, I am actually extremely privileged.
But, despite that recognition, having worked since the age of 16, I also know the value of my money. I have worked for what I have. This is why, for instance, I get apoplectic with rage about corruption.
Under Kenya’s ridiculously constructed tax brackets, I fall into the same top tax bracket as Kenya’s Big Men. And I get nothing for it, having to pay privately for everything—including security where I live and medical insurance. But, my privileges taken into account, I certainly wouldn’t mind paying the amounts of tax that I do pay if I felt the money went to help those with fewer privileges, not to pay the obscene salaries of those who cannot be bothered to assure the House of a quorum sufficient to pass even 10 Bills a year — or to build the “bigness” of the Big Men.
The other night, some friends and I calculated the share of Safaricom’s reported Ksh17 billion ($253.7 million) profit that would have gone to Mobitelea — the company that, according to the Public Investments Committee, is irregularly in possession of no less than five per cent of the mobile phone company’s shares, meaning that there are apparently no records of Mobitelea having paid for that shareholding.
MEANING THAT MY TAX MONEY, which went into building and sustaining Telkom and Safaricom, was essentially given away. Meaning that, coming back to our calculation, the alleged owners of Mobitelea — the son of a Big Man and the son-in-law of another Big Man under the former regime and a Big Man in this regime — earned themselves no less than Ksh850,000,000 ($12.6 million) last year alone. From doing nothing at all, except live off the profits of having stolen from us. Ksh850 million off my back (and your’s as well). Again, I am incapacitated with rage.
And yet, the Treasury insists that Safaricom’s initial public offer will proceed, regardless of the outcomes of the PIC debate within the House or any court cases that might ensue.
What?!
FRANKLY, DESPITE OUR NEWFOUND fascination with IPOs, I don’t think a single one of us should put a single shilling forward. Those of us who do work hard and honestly deserve better. If shares in Safaricom could essentially be given away to Big Men, their sons and sons-in laws, then they can be given away to us. Why should we pay for them? They’re our property in the first place, which the government was meant to hold in trust for us. If it breached that trust for three of us, then it should share the love with all of us.
It might not seem like it, but there are, in fact, victims of corruption. Those victims are you and me — every single Kenyan who dutifully pays his or her taxes. I’m furious. I’m ready for a tax boycott — the residential associations led the way and it’s time to scale up their efforts. We need to say to hell with that IPO until the issues raised by the PIC have been satisfactorily dealt with. We need to be the “small axes” that Robert Nestor Marley talked about and cut down all those “big trees.”
L. Muthoni Wanyeki is a political scientist based in Nairobi
@coldi, security security security! sadly we now all know that kibaki has neither the will nor the might to gaurantee security for kenyans
ReplyDelete@mwasjd, i think it will still be important to participate in the safaricom IPO. that share may shoot 5 times on the first day!
@patriotic Kenyan, that article by muthoni makes great reading, unfortunately thats where its goodness stops.
OD: Umeficha wapi?
ReplyDeleteAma you are training to join Raila's army?
I miss your views on Kenyan life...
hahhaha
ReplyDeleterofl coldi you are too funny
Nobody complains like you - nice writing. Just linked you at upnaira.
ReplyDelete"oversubscribed...again" could describe the zeal reported for Nigerian IPOs around the same time.