As part of the role of overall advisor to governments, we demonstrate our understanding of and commitment to the fundamental changes that it wishes to implement. These include political changes as well as economic changes aimed at correcting inequity and lack of local ownership. In any privatization transaction, Loita is able to advise both governments and potential investors with the objective of sustaining the business in question for a profitable return while at the same time meeting public policy goals.

PROJECT FINANCE

The Loita Group is one of the market leaders in project finance with unrivalled expertise in creating financial structures to support clients in infrastructure development and business rehabilitation and expansion.

LCF project finance team is based in Johannesburg and has specific experience and advisory capacity in a number of sectors, including water and wastewater, energy, transport, construction and mining. Our relationship with domestic and international financial institutions and export credit agencies, which forms the basis of any project financing, as well as our understanding of the various support processes, allows us to provide relevant and comprehensive advice to clients.

This advice is supplemented by the strength of our knowledge of the African financing market and the network of relationships we maintain with project developers, operators, contractors and service industries.

CORPORATE BROKING

The Corporate Broking team's operation is based on the working knowledge and relationships that we have with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), Securities Regulation Panel (SRP), Kenya Stock Exchange (KSE), Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), Namibian Stock Exchange (NSE), Botswana Stock Exchange (BSE), Lusaka Stock Exchange (LuSE), the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE), the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) and other financial bodies.

Our primary role is the interaction with our corporate client base in the following ways:

We advise on all JSE and SRP requirements and represent our corporate clients on issues requiring JSE and SRP rulings.

We assist in the approval, drafting and review of all documentation which requires publication in accordance with JSE and SRP requirements.

We keep regular contact with our corporate clients regarding developments on the JSE (issues such as new STRATE and share buy-backs), the SRP (amendments to the code on take-overs and mergers) and specific topics such as American Depository Receipts and the Insider Trading Act.

We manage the broker-client relationship by attending general and special meetings, informing our clients of unusual market activities in the shares and maintaining regular contact via telephone or personal visits.

We identify opportunities for our clients by utilizing the network of relationships we have among our client base and professional advisors.

We liaise with the Company Secretary concerned regarding the timeous processing of the listing of shares resulting from the exercising of share options, acquisitions, capitalization issues and issues of shares for cash.

INVESTOR RELATIONS

Our expertise through many years of exposure to the financial markets and both our retail and institutional client bases have given us the ability to advise on all aspects of shareholder/investor communication such as those listed below:

Format of annual and interim results;

Optimizing disclosure and impact of the annual report;

Local and international road-shows;

Broker research;

Investor lunches;

Investor presentations;

Plant/site visits;

Liaison with a financial public relations company for media coverage.

CORPORATE SALES

Our clients range from medium and large corporations to African governments. We are active on transactions in at least 25 countries, including but not limited to the sectors of agribusiness, energy, financial services, telecommunications, transport and water.

The members of the corporate finance team work with the relevant sector-focused teams and, where appropriate, colleagues from the local offices so as to bring to the transaction all the relevant skills (i.e. technical, sector and local) to maximize service delivery and execution capability.

This team has an in-depth knowledge of the market and works closely with our other teams to review clients' needs and subsequently assist in the process of presenting pro-active corporate finance opportunities to them. We believe this provides an additional service to complement those provided by our corporate financiers. Obviously we only share market information with clients in a manner that is consistent with the terms of the Insider Trading Act.

MINING

Mining is one of the core foreign currency earners and biggest growth sectors in Africa. The Corporate Finance Team is intimately familiar with the African, Australian, and Canadian mining industries in terms of mineral extraction (solid and fuel) and maximizing the structuring of those ventures so as to realize the greatest value for our clients.

Our aim is to have our mining team rated in the top three globally by reputation and first among the international institutions represented in Africa. The mining team is based in South Africa and is therefore able to provide coherent and consistent advice to both South African and international mining companies in all their likely areas of operation.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

This area within Corporate Finance covers one of the most dynamic sectors in Africa We monitor and advise on developments in private mobile telephony, the privatization of fixed-line telecommunications operators, the corporate restructuring and possible partition of parastatal posts and telecommunications and policy changes which impact data transmission and internet service providers.

IT/MEDIA

The information technology sector has also seen enormous growth in Africa. We actively advise a number of companies both on local and international acquisitions and, again, make full use of Loita Group's industry expertise and global network.

It is our view that the convergence between voice, data and media transmission will see increasing opportunities in this latter sub-set of the sector which we will be well placed to service given our Africa wide expertise in media and data transmission (interactive media).

DIVERSIFIEDS

This team has responsibility for those sectors not covered by the remaining four teams, such as retail, paper and packaging, financial services and agri-products. The close working relationship this team has with the other units throughout the group allows it to respond quickly to opportunities for inward investment as well as identify targets for our clients wishing to invest overseas.

ENERGY AND UTILITIES

This team uses its specialized knowledge of this sector in the structuring of transactions that we are contemplating with our clients. Energy and utilities is slated to be one of the major strengths of the Corporate Finance team going forward.

TRANSPORT

As quite a bit of the transport infrastructure (e.g. airlines, airports, ports and railways) is still wholly or majority state-owned, our transport team works closely with the privatization and project finance teams locally to maximize the value that we add to the corporatization, financing, restructuring and privatization of these entities.

HOSPITALITY

The Hospitality sector is a growing one within Africa with strategic locations being highly profitable and a good sounding board for further growth. The team offers complete financial advisory services for potential hospitality projects, from the preliminary project phase and feasibility stage through to the construction & completion phase. It is our view that with skilled assistance during the master planning of the project development or acquisition, in a sector which offers enormous opportunities, value can be maximised for our clients.

Contacts
Should you wish to contact Loita's corporate finance team directly, please send an e-mail to
Mr. Yousef Bazian, Director - Corporate Finance at ybazian@loita.com.