South Africa’s Standard Bank and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) have signed a collaboration agreement to raise up to R10-billion over the coming five years to support South African power generation developments.
ICBC is Standard Bank’s largest shareholder, having acquired 20% of the business in 2009.
The agreement was signed in the presence of Chinese President Xi Jinping and South Africa’s President Jacob Zuma at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation in Johannesburg.
Standard Bank would act as ICBC’s arranging and structuring adviser in raising the capital from the financial markets.
Standard Bank CEO Sim Tshabalala also announced that the ICBC-Standard Bank partnership would jointly support up to 100 new infrastructure and industrial projects across Africa, ranging from resources and transportation, to electricity and telecommunications, to manufacturing and industrial parks.
“Strategic cooperation between ICBC and Standard Bank has enabled us to arrange more than $7-billion in loans to African countries and to complete over $14-billion of transactions that have brought equity and debt capital from Chinese corporations and financial institutions to Africa,” Tshabalala added.
