Bob Diamond’s African dreams start to unravel
Atlas Mara is cutting costs, raising funds and has just lost its chief
London — Bob Diamond is looking like the last person standing at Atlas Mara, the troubled African banking group he co-founded three years ago. The company floated on the London Stock Exchange at $10 a share in December 2013, and in two shares offers raised $625m to buy banks in seven African countries. Diamond’s co-founder in the company is Ashish Thakkar, a Dubai-based entrepreneur. They didn’t foresee that commodity price falls would hit many African economies, pushing up bad loans at some of Atlas Mara’s banks and causing its share price to fall. That stymied Atlas Mara’s original plan to buy more banks by raising additional equity. The new shares were placed at $1.91 apiece and the stock traded at $2.12 Thursday.
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