The Ndegwa family is set to get Sh. 2.4 billion from the sale of a 24.1 percent stake in ICEA Lion Insurance Holdings. The stake will be sold to private equity firm Leapfrog Investments.
This move comes days after a report by the NCBA Bank Group revealed that the Ndegwa brothers each own a Sh. 1.6 billion stake in the lender.
According to a report that appeared in the Business Daily, Leapfrog is using its investment vehicle Eastern Africa Holdings Limited for the buyout that valued the ICEA Lion Insurance Holdings at Sh. 10 billion.
“The Ndegwa family, one of the richest families in Kenya, have proposed or completed five disposals and mergers in the past five years, including the October 2019 merger of NIC Group and CBA to form NCBA Group worth billions of money. In 2015, the family sold ICEA Building in Nairobi’s central business district to Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology for Sh. 1.8 billion, leading to its renaming as JKUAT Towers. The building’s sale was followed by the disposal of Ennsvalley Bakery to Unga Group —a company in which the Ndegwas have a controlling 50.93 percent stake. The transaction was done in two tranches between 2016 and 2017 for a total of Sh. 535 million.”
“This is also the latest deal in the Kenyan market for Leapfrog, which has previously bought and sold insurers including Apollo Investments Limited – the parent company of APA Life and APA Insurance,” the report said.
The report says that Leapfrog has partnered with New Jersey-based insurer Prudential Financial Inc in the ICEA deal. “The transaction comes after the two multinationals announced in 2016 that they would make joint investments of $350 million (Sh. 37.5 billion) in life insurance companies in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and other African markets.”
According to the report, one of the holding company’s subsidiaries, ICEA Lion Asset Management, is concurrently moving to conclude its buyout of Stanlib Kenya for an undisclosed sum as it seeks to build scale in the fund management business. “The deal will raise ICEA’s managed funds to more than Sh. 200 billion compared to the previous estimate of Sh. 143 billion,” it says.
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