It is established to provide long-term financing for the
delivery of critical infrastructure.
Mr Peter Ashade, the Group Chief Executive Officer of United
Capital, disclosed in a notice posted on the website of the Nigerian Exchange
(NGX) Ltd on Monday in Lagos.
Ashade said the UCIF would help to bridge the infrastructure
deficits in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.
He said that the UCIF had been duly registered by the
Securities and Exchange Commission as a closed-ended fund with a N150 bilion
issuance programme.
Ashade added that the fund was positioned to finance
bankable infrastructure assets that cut across sectors such as power and
renewable energy, transportation, agribusiness and industrial infrastructure,
healthcare, technology and mass housing, among others.
He said the fund would be managed by United Capital Asset
Management Ltd (UCAML).
Ashade noted that the fund retained Africa Finance
Corporation, as the independent Financial Advisor, to provide additional layers
of best practice of corporate governance which enhances the project appraisal
and due diligence activities of the fund Management team.
“The journey to launch the fund has taken almost two years,
during which period extensive preparatory studies and appraisals were carried
out to establish the business case for the fund.
“As well as to define a model and governance framework that
would provide investors that have an appetite for long-term financing products
(such as pension funds and insurance companies), with sufficient confidence of
the attractiveness of UCIF, as an investment opportunity,” he said.
Also speaking, the Managing Director/Chief Executive
Officer, UCAML, Mrs Odiri Oginni, said that the fund management team had
screened and appraised numerous infrastructure projects in the last two year.
“During the almost two years of preparatory activities, the
fund management team scanned, screened and appraised numerous infrastructure
projects and is now at advanced stages of conducting due diligence on a deal
pipeline valued in excess of N54 billion.
“UCIF is working on building strategic alliances with
financing counterparts such as multilaterals and public authorities, to ensure
that appropriate financing securities and credit enhancement instruments are in
place to de-risk the Fund’s portfolio investments,” Oginni said.
United Capital is a financial services group with activities
that span investment banking, asset management, securities trading, trustees,
wealth management and consumer finance.
0 comments:
Post a Comment