Cauris Signs a Financing Agreement with AFD

On Wednesday, May 18, 2011, a signing ceremony for a financing agreement was held at the headquarters of Cauris Management in Lomé, Togo, between the French Development Agency (AFD) in Lomé, represented by its Director, Mr. Philippe COLLIGNON, and Cauris Management, represented by its Chairman and CEO, Mr. Yawo Noël Z. EKLO.

Under this financing agreement, the AFD is granting Cauris Management a subsidy of up to thirty thousand euros (nineteen million six hundred seventy-nine thousand CFA francs) to strengthen the company’s environmental and social procedures and policies. Cauris Management is one of the leading private equity fund management firms, having operated for over 15 years primarily in French-speaking West Africa.

This AFD financing follows an investment by PROPARCO (Promotion et Participation pour la Coopération Économique), an AFD subsidiary dedicated to the private sector, in the capital of the Cauris Croissance II Fund (FCC II), which began operations in October 2010 by raising EUR 45 million (FCFA 30 billion) toward a target of EUR 60 million (FCFA 39.4 billion) to be reached in 2011. This financing will involve, with PROPARCO’s support, a team of experts tasked with:

• review Cauris Management’s procedures and policies;
• propose improvements to said procedures and policies;
• train the management team on the new policy.

The Cauris Croissance II Fund, one of the largest funds focused primarily on French-speaking West Africa, is the third fund managed by Cauris Management, which has been operating for more than fifteen years with offices in Lomé and Abidjan. The two previous funds were Cauris Investissement and Cauris Croissance, raised in 1995 and 2006, respectively. With the Cauris Croissance II Fund, Cauris Management’s total assets under management have reached EUR 83 million (55 billion CFA francs).

Renowned subregional and international investors have renewed their confidence in Cauris Management, including: BOAD, the Bank of Africa Group (BOA), the Banque Atlantique Group, FMO (Netherlands), GTA-C2A Vie (Togo), CDC (United Kingdom), BIO (Belgium), OIKOCREDIT (Netherlands), and PROPARCO (France).

In line with its investment strategy, Cauris Management invests equity and quasi-equity in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) primarily located in French-speaking West Africa and demonstrating an excellent growth strategy. As a result, Cauris Management has invested in approximately 40 companies across the WAEMU countries and has completed about 20 divestitures at the end of its investment periods, generating substantial capital gains. In addition to increasing the profitability of the target companies and creating jobs, Cauris’s investments and the expertise of its management team have enabled these companies to improve their governance through Cauris’s representation on their boards of directors and various committees (strategy, audit, etc.), as well as their environmental and social procedures and practices in accordance with World Bank standards.