As more Africans buy shares in the Dangote Group, Africa’s richest man and President of Dangote Industries Limited, Aliko Dangote has disclosed that he is willing to reduce his ownership of the Dangote Petroleum Refinery to 25 per cent.
The billionaire business man stated this during a fireside chat at the Nairobi Securities Exchange in Kenya, also disclosed his company’s planned investments in Africa, the Lamu refinery and its proposed public ownership structure in Kenya and other African countries.
The billionaire also said the planned ownership structure of his businesses would increasingly involve ordinary Africans, stressing that the group was willing to sell more shares where there was sufficient demand.
According to him, the company initially planned to raise $2.5 billion through a private placement and an initial public offering.
“The issue is that when we decided to do this expansion, we said, okay, fine, we’re going to sell about $2.5billion worth of shares.And during that, we opened up a private placement; that’s just by invitation. The private placement was to get about a billion dollars, and then IPO, $1.5billion, so that’s a total of $2.5billion,” Dangote said.
According to him, the private placement attracted demand of $3.7 billion. “But the private placement came out with a demand of $3.7 billion. So we already took the $2.5 billion after a lot of argument because we are two shareholders then, ourselves and the Nigerian National Petroleum Company, and we were able to convince them that, look, it’s better that we allow $2.5 billion to go,” he said.
He added that the group subsequently created another $1.6 billion offering to expand public ownership. “And then after that, we created another $1.6 billion. The real purpose is for us to democratise wealth-making,” he said adding that the group was prepared to reduce its stake in the refinery significantly if more Africans wanted to buy shares.
“This $1.6billion that we have, I can tell you for nothing that we will sell more. We will go to the regulator and ask the regulator that, ‘Look, there is more demand; we want more Africans to own it ‘. As we go along, we don’t mind, even if Dangote will end up having twenty or twenty-five per cent, we have nothing to hide.”
This means that the group could ultimately sell up to 75 per cent of its stake in the refinery, depending on further share sales and demand from investors. Dangote maintained that shareholders would also have a role in determining the leadership of the company if they were dissatisfied with its performance.
“If we go to an AGM, if we are not doing the right thing, then change the leadership. You can vote us out, and put anything that you think can do better, which I doubt very much,” he noted.
He added that the group was committed to corporate governance and protecting minority shareholders as it brings more of its businesses to the capital market.
