This weekend marks five years since Safaricom floated its
shares at the Nairobi Securities exchange. A total of 10 billion shares were
floated. It’s been mixed fortunes so far. For the government and institutional
investors, the fortunes from the floating have been mind boggling, but for the
small retail investors, the fortunes have dimmed, and that perhaps explains why
small investors have largely shied
away from the NSE.
A shadowy firm,
mobitelea, which held a 5 percent stake in Safaricom, has since sold the stake
to Vodafone Plc, even as those behind the shadowy company have not been
identified to date. Perhaps, the greatest lesson from the issue of Safaricom
shares is that just because a leading company floats its shares doesn’t mean
fortunes are to be made, there are transaction fees to be paid. Even worse are
the small investors who took loans to buy shares, as they had to pay hidden
loan charges form banks, and the banks held their shares as security until all
the loans as cleared up.
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