By William Jimoh, with agency report

ARRANGEMENT has been finalised for the Investment Corp of Dubai, ICD, the state fund that holds stakes in some of the emirate’s top firms, to buy a $300 million stake in Dangote Cement, said Carl Franklin, Head, Investor Relation, Dangote Group. With this development, ICD will take up a stake of about 1.3 per cent in Dangote Cement

According to stockbrokers on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, NSE, 243 million shares of Dangote Cement have been transferred to ICD at N200 each, a 12 percent premium to Dangote Cement’s price of around N223 on Monday. This followed an initial sale of 1.5 percent of its 95 percent stake to South Africa’s Public Investment Corporation, PIC, for $289.3 million last year.

“ICD is diversifying its portfolio … into the West African market through a minority stake in Dangote Cement. We believe this bodes well for future investments into Nigeria from the Middle East,” Akinbamidele Akintola, an Africa equity sales executive at Renaissance Capital, said. The company had earlier revealed its plan to expand its operation beyond Africa to countries in the Middle East and Latin America with targeted increase capacity to 62 million metric tons by 2017, up from a projected 42 million tons this year.
The move as hatched, is expected to rank Dangote Cement among the top ten global cement producers .