8 September 2011, Sweetcrude, Accra – Kosmos Energy, which plans to list in Ghana to raise about $50 million for development there, is on track to join the bourse by the end of the year, Ghana’s capital market regulator has said.
Kosmos, backed by private equity firms Blackstone Group and Warburg Pincus, has a 23.49% stake in Ghana’s huge Jubilee offshore oilfield. The field is operated by Tullow Oil of the United Kingdom and holds as much as 2 billion barrels of light crude.
US- based Kosmos first announced its plan to list on the Ghana Stock Exchange in June, the same month Tullow started selling its shares to the Ghanaian public.
Tullow shares started trading on the bourse in July.
“We have just listed Tullow Oil and we are working on listing Kosmos. Kosmos will come on before the end of the year,” Adu Anane-Antwi, Securities and Exchange Commission of Ghana director general told Reuters after signing a cooperation agreement with Kenya’s capital markets regulator.
“Investment advisors and the sponsoring brokers have been speaking to us. They are preparing their prospectus. Once we get the prospectus, in a matter of six weeks we will have approved it,” he told the news wire.
Ghana’s stock exchange has encouraged international firms operating in Ghana to list to increase local participation in their activities and boost liquidity on the bourse, the lack of which has been a major investor complaint.
