Lusaka Bourse May Buy Stake in Commodities Market After Tie-Up

Zambia’s Lusaka Stock Exchange said it will consider buying a stake in Zamace Ltd., the sole agricultural commodities bourse in Africa’s largest copper producer, as the markets talk about areas of cooperation.

“These are the details that will come from the various discussions,” Brian Tembo, chief executive officer at the Lusaka Stock Exchange, said today in an interview in the capital. “We are not restricting ourselves to anything.”

The equities exchange, known as the LuSE, and Zamace plan to sign a preliminary agreement this year that will seek to exploit synergies between the two markets, said Tembo, who was executive director at Zamace before taking up his current position. The LuSE has systems in place that may benefit Zamace, including a trading platform and share depository, Jacob Mwale, Zamace’s acting executive director, said by phone.

Zamace, a 15-member bourse set-up in 2007, provided a trading platform for crops such as wheat, soybeans and sunflowers as well as cement and fertilizer until it suspended operations in mid-2011. Zambia is southern Africa’s biggest corn producer after South Africa and Malawi. The two bourses have been in talks since 2011, Tembo said in an interview in October, when he said the companies may start merger negotiations.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Hill in Lusaka at [email protected]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Antony Sguazzin at [email protected]