非洲人民的钱不好赚

　　Miles Morland, a pioneering Africa investor, has spent more than two decades looking for deals in places where you cannot drink the tap water. If his experience is anything to go by, finding successful private equity opportunities has more to do with sharing a glass of the stronger stuff in African bars.

　　二十多年来，投资非洲的先行者迈尔斯?莫兰(Miles Morland)一直在这片不能直接饮用自来水的地方寻找投资机会。按照他的经验，要想找到成功的私人股本投资机会，跟人在酒吧里一起喝杯烈酒比什么都管用。

　　“In Africa there are hundreds of deals but you have to go and look for them. In the west, investment bankers bring you deals?.?.?.[but], in Africa, investment bankers are way down the food chain. You need to go and hang around the bars?.?.?.?to find the deals,” Mr Morland says.

　　莫兰说：“非洲有不少投资机会，但你必须主动去找。在西方，投资银行家给你带来交易……(但)在非洲，投资银行家位于食物链下游。你得去泡吧……才能发现机会。”

　　The case for investing in sub-Saharan Africa is clear. It has some of the fastest growing economies in the world, boosted by a nascent consumer class increasingly thirsty for everything from credit to cappuccinos. And it represents just 4 per cent of the emerging markets private equity asset class – emerging Asia takes the lion’s share at 63 per cent – suggesting there is plenty of room to grow.

　　在撒哈拉以南非洲投资有着充分的理由。该地区正在兴起一个新的消费者阶层，从贷款到卡布基诺咖啡等许多事物都是他们渴望拥有的东西，在这种需求的推动下了，该地区一些经济体的增长速度在世界上名列前茅。然而，在新兴市场私人股本资产类别中，该地区仅占4%的份额，这说明它在这个领域有很大增长潜力。亚洲新兴市场则以63%的份额独占鳌头。

　　But even as private equity groups raise ever larger Africa funds, there are persistent murmurs in the market that there simply are not the deals out there to match. Mr Morland disagrees. Development Partners International, the private equity group he co-founded, has invested the $500m fund it raised in 2008 in nine deals and is raising a new fund of the same size.

　　然而，尽管私人股本集团在非洲募集的基金规模越来越大，市场却总是抱怨找不到匹配的投资机会。莫兰不同意这种观点。他与人联合创立的私人股本集团Development Partners International已经把2008年募得的5亿美元投资于9项交易，目前还在募集一只同等规模的新基金。

　　Mr Morland, nevertheless, argues that the high rolling returns of the decade leading up to 2007 are a thing of the past. The “fool’s paradise” era when mobile phone companies grew faster in Africa than anywhere else in the world may have made some investors very rich, he says, but it is long gone.

　　不过莫兰认为，1998至2007年间的高滚动收益率已成为往事。他表示，在“愚者天堂”的时代，非洲手机公司发展速度在全球领先，可能让一些投资者暴富，但这个时代早已一去不复返了。

　　There is now a glut of new private equity investors plumping for Africa, with money from Brazil, the Middle East and the US entering the fray, jostling with bigger outfits such as Carlyle and KKR. Some of the newcomers are finding private equity investing in sub-Saharan Africa neither as promising nor as simple as sometimes billed.

　　如今，新一批私人股本投资者奔赴非洲，来自巴西、中东和美国的资金加入战场，与凯雷(Carlyle)和KKR等规模较大的机构展开角逐。一些新加入的投资者发现，在撒哈拉以南非洲进行私人股本投资并不如有时标榜的那样前景大好、简单易行。

　　In the 1990s, returns were hard to find and many good exits fell victim to currency volatility. In the following decade, investors might have earned stellar returns from mobile phone investments but these masked other fund failures.

　　上世纪90年代缺乏回报率可观的投资机会，许多理想的投资退出渠道深受汇率波动影响。在之后的十年，投资者或许通过投资手机领域获得了不菲回报，但这掩盖了其他失败案例。

　　“In the current 2007-17 cycle, making money will be harder. An internal rate of return of over 20 per cent will look good,” Mr Morland says. “It is a time when careful investors rather than cowboys will do well?.?.?.?The phone game is over.”

　　“在2007至2017年周期，投资将更难获得收益。20%的内部回报率就是很好的表现了，”莫兰说，“在这个时期，表现出色的将是谨慎而非胆大的投资者……投资手机的时代已经结束了。”

　　Despite the tougher environment, fundraisers are at pains to assemble what one investor calls “big ego” funds. Brazil’s BTG Pactual and others are reaching for the $1bn mark and seeking large deals that the continent’s fragmented market can rarely offer.

　　尽管环境变得严峻，但募资机构仍在努力组建起一位投资者所称的“自负”(big ego)基金。巴西BTG Pactual等机构的基金直指10亿美元大关，它们寻找的大型项目一般来说不是非洲四分五裂的市场所能提供的。

　　“When you start going up to writing equity cheques in excess of $75m, there aren’t so many [deals],” says Marlon Chigwende, Carlyle’s Africa co-head. His sub-Saharan Africa fund, which is expected to close above its $500m target in the third quarter, made its first investment last year by taking part in a $210m equity injection in ETG, a Tanzanian agri-commodities trader.

　　“如果你准备进行超过7500万美元的股权投资，便很难找到投资的机会，”凯雷非洲联席主管马龙?奇格温德(Marlon Chigwende)表示。他在撒哈拉以南非洲的基金将在今年第三季度完成募资，总金额预计高于5亿美元目标。该基金去年首次投资，参与了对坦桑尼亚农业大宗商品交易商ETG的2.1亿美元股本注资。

　　Nor is the competition just for deals. Another emerging headache is what one investor calls the “traffic jam” of fund managers seeking capital from investors. According to Preqin, the data company, 57 Africa-focused private equity funds are looking for $13.1bn, half of which are based in South Africa. While emerging market fundraising increased 72 per cent overall to $40bn in the past two years, fundraising for sub-Saharan Africa fell 3 per cent to $1.45bn last year – well down on its 2008 peak of $2.24bn.

　　争夺的对象不仅仅是投资机会。另一问题正在浮现：基金管理公司追逐投资者的资本，因而出现了一名投资者所说的“拥堵”现象。按照数据公司Preqin的资料，目前有57家专注于非洲的私人股本投资基金寻求募集131亿美元资金，其中有一半基金位于南非。最近两年里，新兴市场的募资总额增长72%，达400亿美元，但去年撒哈拉以南非洲的募资额却下滑3%，仅为14.5亿美元，远低于2008年22.4亿美元的峰值。

　　Ethos, a South African private equity company, which has been investing in the region for 25 years, closed one of the continent’s largest funds last year after securing $800m from investors, but it says fundraising “has not been easy”.

　　南非私人股本公司Ethos在该地区投资已有25年。去年，Ethos向投资者募集了8亿美元，创设了非洲最大基金之一。但它表示，募资“并不容易”。

　　Harith, another South African fund manager, had to rely on domestic money after foreign investors shied away.

　　随着国外投资者纷纷退缩，另一家南非基金管理公司Harith只得依赖国内资金。

　　Roger Leeds, founder of the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association, says the smarter money is targeting middle market deals worth less than $50m, which he believes have stronger growth prospects.

　　新兴市场私人股本协会(Emerging Markets Private Equity Association)创始人罗杰?利兹(Roger Leeds)表示，更精明的资金正在瞄准5000万美元以下的中等规模投资机会。他认为这一领域的增长前景更为强劲。

　　“The fund managers are happy to take investors’ money but it puts tremendous pressure on them to do bigger deals and they’re going to run out,” he says. “They’re all complaining they’re finding trouble finding deals and they’re competing with each other and driving up valuations.”

　　“基金经理很乐意吸收投资者资金，但这会对他们产生巨大的压力，要求他们投资大的项目，而这种投资机会快要没了，”他说，“他们都在抱怨难以找到投资机会，他们互相竞争，将估值越抬越高。”

　　In other words, as the African growth story attracts more and more funds, the going is getting tougher. 换言之，非洲的增长故事吸引了越来越多的资金，但现状却愈发严峻。

　　That is one reason why resourceful and locally based managers matter so much more today than in the past.

　　因此，有能力的当地基金经理发挥着比过去更重要的作用。

　　“It’s no longer like venture capital where you take a shotgun approach and hopefully one of the pellets will hit the bullseye,” says veteran fund manager Michael Turner at Actis, the UK-based fund manager, which is raising money for a new global fund that will include Africa. “In today’s African private equity you can’t afford to have failures – it’s extremely hard to come back in a portfolio to deliver an overall good profit if you’ve had one or two wipeouts.”

　　英国基金管理公司英联(Actis)正在为一支囊括非洲的新全球性基金募资。该公司的资深基金经理迈克尔?特纳(Michael Turner)称：“现在私人股本投资跟风投不一样了，风投是漫天放枪，指望有一颗子弹能命中靶心。但当今的非洲私人股本领域容不得失败——如果有一两笔投资崩盘，一项投资组合就极难产生总体上很好的利润。”

　　Sev Vettivetpillai has made dozens of Africa investments and exits as head of Aureos, which was bought by Abraaj Capital of the United Arab Emirates last year. He says the days of flying in and out of Africa and managing investments from a distance are over.

　　作为欧瑞斯(Aureos)的首席执行官，塞夫?维蒂维特皮莱(Sev Vettivetpillai)在非洲做过许多投资，也曾退出其中的一些投资。欧瑞斯去年被阿联酋的Abraaj Capital收购。他表示，不停往返非洲、远程管理投资的日子已经远去。

　　“The growth story is very valid and real across Africa, but it still remains that if you pick the wrong partner and the wrong industry, you’re not likely to be benefiting from that growth story. Without the right management team you will lose your money. You won’t get out of that hole.”

　　“非洲各地的增长故事真实可信，但如果选错合作伙伴和行业，你仍然难以从中受益。没有合适的管理团队，你便会赔钱，后果难以收拾。”