Banking on Nigeria

Stephen Jennings, the New Zealand-born founder and chief executive of Moscow-based investment bank Renaissance Capital, is setting up a consumer finance business in Nigeria with hopes to tap the fast-growing economy’s rising middle class. RenCap is hoping to replicate the success of its Russian consumer finance business, which eight years after its start has 5 million customers, 4500 employees and is targeting $130m in operating profit this year. Jennings said the economy of Nigeria, with its almost 160 million inhabitants, would be ideal for a technology and scale-driven consumer finance business. “This can become a bigger and more profitable business than the one we have in Russia,” he said.


Tags: Financial Times  Renaissance Capital  Russia  Stephen Jennings  

Wayve CEO Alex Kendall Has Bill Gates’ Attention

Wayve CEO Alex Kendall Has Bill Gates’ Attention

Since launching Wayve in 2017, CEO Alex Kendall has often felt like the self-driving car industry’s mostly ignored little brother, Tom Huddleston reports for CNBC. For years, Kendall and co-founder Amar Shah…