DGAP-News: Altira AG founds Private Equity Boutique focusing on Africa

Altira AG / Miscellaneous

22.01.2008 

Release of a Corporate-announcement, transmitted by DGAP - a company of EquityStory AG.
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.
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++ Altira founds Private Equity Boutique focusing on Africa
++ First fund with €15m has been launched
++ Target volume of some €100m by end of 2008

Altira AG continues to develop its private equity product range and has
founded one of the very first European private equity boutiques focusing on
the African continent ADC African Development GmbH.

The first fund, ADC African Development Corporation
(www.african-development.com), has already been launched. The initial
investment volume of some €15m comes from Altira itself and from selected
investors. The fund volume shall be rised through further fund raising from
institutional investors to over €50m by the end of June 2008 and to some
€100m by the end of the year.

The investment focus is banking and financial services, IT services und
real estate. ADC pursues an active fund management policy with an
entrepreneurial focus. The team with currently four persons consists of
experienced international specialists in industry and consulting. It is
headed up by Dirk Harbecke, a senior manager with a highly developed
entrepreneurial spirit and more than twelve years' experience in the
finance, technology and communications sector.  He has already built up two
businesses and most recently worked as a top management adviser with the
Boston Consulting Group. His international experience embraces multiple
locations, including Abu Dhabi/Dubai, China, North Africa and the USA. The
initial investments are already in the final due diligence phase and
completion is scheduled for the first quarter 2008.

Many economists consider that Africa represents the future. Economic growth
in the coming years and decades is forecast to be as strong as the Asian
emerging market countries have done in the past. Main driver is the
continent’s enormous wealth in raw materials and growing consumer demand
driven by the recent arrival of a middle class. In the last five years, 7
out of the 20 highest growth countries in the world have been in Africa.
40% of worldwide uranium deposits, around 50% of the world’s cobalt
reserves and some 80% of platinum holdings are in Africa. Significant
volumes of iron ore, diamonds, oil and natural gas are also present.
Furthermore, a growing number of countries are making major improvements to
ensure a prosperous future: political stability, democratization and moving
towards a market economy based on strong financial systems.

Consequently major African stock markets posted high double digit gains in
2007. However, currently very few African companies are listed; this offers
a much wider investment opportunity for a private equity approach such as
that followed by Altira. Especially the Western, Central and Eastern Africa
regions, which are very rich in raw materials, are in a kind of
'pre-stock-market and privatization phase' similar to the privatization
phase in Russia at the beginning of the nineteen nineties.

Additional, investments in Africa are quite uncorrelated with traditional
equity investments both in Western countries and other emerging markets.
This provides investors portfolio diversification and Altira stable income
streams, as Altira earns both fixed fees and variable performance fees.

There will be particular investment focus in Rwanda, which is one of the
most booming countries in Eastern Africa with annual growth of over 6%. ADC
African Development GmbH has opened its first offices in the capital
Kigali. From there it should be possible to gain access to the neighbouring
countries. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame emphasized the benefit of private
economic investment in Africa: 'The $400 billion in development assistance
that flowed into Africa in the last 50 years has achieved relatively little
apart from creating dependency. In any case, it is entrepreneurship and
private investment that creates prosperity, not assistance. It is high time
therefore that Africa puts this concept into practice by relentlessly
promoting private sector investment that will result in more jobs and
bigger tax base to enable our countries to develop. That is why we welcome
Altira’s strategy as one of the first large European private equity
investors in our region and in Rwanda, and are pleased at the partnership.'


Contact:
Altira Aktiengesellschaft
Juan Rodriguez
Head of Investor Relations
Tel: +49 69 719 159 66 405
E-Mail: juan.rodriguez@altira-group.de


DGAP 22.01.2008 
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Language:     English
Issuer:       Altira AG
              Grüneburgweg 18
              60322 Frankfurt / Main
              Deutschland
Phone:        +49 (0)69 719 159 66 - 0
Fax:          +49 (0)69 719 159 66 - 11
E-mail:       info@altira-group.de
Internet:     www.altira-group.de
ISIN:         DE0001218063
WKN:          121806
Listed:       Freiverkehr in Berlin, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart; Entry Standard
              in Frankfurt
End of News                                     DGAP News-Service
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