GuarantCo to open new east and southern Africa office

GuarantCo is to open new headquarters in East Africa, today, Monday 2nd November 2015, as its business in financing infrastructure development in east and southern Africa expands.

GuarantCo, a Facility of the Private Infrastructure Development Group, provides local currency and dollar-denominated guarantees to banks and bond investors, to support infrastructure projects.

Janice Kotut-Sang (biography below), of Frontier Markets Fund Managers Ltd, will act as GuarantCo’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, heading up the new Nairobi-based operation.

Janice will be supported by Investment Advisor Eugene Ntananga (biography below).

The fast-growing African infrastructure market is expected to represent at least 50% of GuarantCo’s future business.

GuarantCo has strong capitalisation and a guarantee-issuing capacity of close to USD1bn for local currency infrastructure financing.

It has strong international investment grade ratings from Fitch (AA- stable), Moody’s (A1 stable) and Cote D’Ivoire-based Bloomfield (AAA stable).

GuarantCo will be looking to especially support transactions in the energy, transport and housing sectors.

GuarantCo Chairman Andrew Bainbridge said:

“We are delighted to strengthen our presence in the region.

“The opening of the Nairobi office demonstrates our commitment to helping project developers, banks and institutional investors deliver priority infrastructure on a sustainable basis.

“We see this as an important next phase of our growth as a company, which accelerates our ability to work with clients to deliver solutions that benefit society.”

“The growing volume of local currency savings and pension pools as well as the development of the local capital markets will create opportunities for structuring new forms of financing which GuarantCo hopes to support.”

Janice Kotut-Sang is the newly appointed Regional Director for GuarantCo in East and Southern Africa. She has over ten years banking experience with Standard Chartered, most recently as London-based Director, Origination and Client Coverage focusing on mining clients in Africa. She has worked in Asia, UK and in Kenya with a varied number of roles in business strategy and origination, including four years running a floriculture operation in Kenya. Janice has a LLB from Warwick University, an LLM from King’s College London and is currently completing her Executive MBA with the Said Business School in Oxford.

Angella recently joined the team as an Investment advisor, having previously worked as a Senior Associate in the PwC UK Corporate Finance team. She has over ten years’ infrastructure experience including as an Associate in PwC Kenya and as a Civil Engineer in Mott MacDonald.