OREANDA-NEWS. August 21, 2007.  Renaissance Capital, the emerging market investment bank, today announced that it acted as Joint Lead Placement agent with JP Morgan in an equity capital offering, which saw one of Nigeria's leading banks, Access Bank plc (“Access Bank”), raise $300 million from leading international institutional investors.

"This heavily oversubscribed deal demonstrates again the huge international investor interest that there is in Nigerian securities. It is typical of the opportunities that are now coming on stream across Sub-Saharan Africa as the region continues its economic acceleration," said Neil Harvey, Deputy CEO of Renaissance Capital and CEO Renaissance Group Africa and Middle East. "Achieved in a difficult market environment with competition from another sizeable Nigerian bank offering, the level of demand generated allowed the issuer to increase the deal from the originally planned $250m. The proceeds will allow Access Bank to make the investments it needs to build on its status as Nigeria’s fastest growing bank. This deal also shows the value of the resources that Renaissance has put into developing our dedicated equities and research platform for Africa."

Access Bank’s CEO, Aigboje Aig-Imoukhuede, said about the transaction, "Access Bank’s international placement generated significantly higher demand than our initial target from a high-quality group of international investors. We have been extremely pleased with the response we received from both the international and domestic offerings and would like to thank Renaissance Capital for the key role it played in making the offering the success that it was."

"This is the second successful equity capital markets placement that we have done this year in Nigeria, following on the equally successful $300m placement of UBA earlier this year," said Renaissance Group CEO Stephen Jennings. "Investors want to see more Nigerian stocks offered to them from a wider selection of industries, not just the banking sector. We therefore expect more capital markets transactions to come for us in Sub-Saharan Africa."