Atlas Merchant Sees Big Opportunities in Africa Banking With Latest Investment

Atlas Merchant’s CEO Bob Diamond’s Africa investment vehicle, Atlas Mara, says it is investing $22.5 million for a 45 percent stake in Banque Populaire du Rwanda. It is Atlas’ second banking deal in as many years. Diamond said Atlas will merge Banque Populaire with RBD Commercial Bank. Right now, Atlas Mara has banking interests in seven of the twelve key markets it wants to be in. Diamond said that over the next two to three years, Atlas will merge all of its sub-Saharan banking interests ‘into one bank, with one technology, under one brand.’ Diamond says the opportunities in the mobile banking space are endless, but in the short-term, ‘One of the opportunities right now is that the European banks, by and large, have been pulling capital out of Africa’ and that’s creating opportunities on the ground for Atlas to work with locally-based businesses. TheStreet’s Rhonda Schaffler has details from the Milken Global Conference in Los Angeles.