Nigeria Approves $14 Billion Dangote Cement Listing, to Add 37% to Market

Nigeria’s stock exchange approved a 22.09 trillion-naira ($14 billion) listing of Dangote Cement, the nation’s biggest producer of the building material, which will increase the bourse’s market capitalization by 37 percent.

The company will be created out of the merger of Dangote Cement and Benue Cement Co., the Lagos-based bourse said in an e-mailed statement today. A total of 15.5 billion shares for the will be listed at 135 naira each, the exchange said, without giving further details. Afrinvest (West Africa) Ltd. will introduce the issue, according to the statement.

The Nigerian bourse, sub-Saharan Africa’s second-biggest after South Africa’s, currently has a market value of $37.2 billion. Dangote is owned by Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote, whose Dangote Group has interests Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc, National Salt Co. Nigeria Plc, logistics and real estate.

“It is a very important development because it will boost confidence in the market,” Bismarck Rewane, chief executive officer of Lagos-based Financial Derivatives Co., said by phone from London today. “The listing is another opportunity for investors to participate in a company that has become the leading producer of cement in Africa.”

Dangote Cement has projects and operations in Nigeria, Benin, Senegal, Zambia and Ghana.

Shareholders of Dangote Cement and Benue, in which Dangote has a stake, will meet on Sept. 28 to pass resolutions on the proposed merger, the two companies said in statements published in ThisDay newspaper yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Vincent Nwanma in Lagos at vnwanma@bloomberg.net.

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