The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has appointed a Kenyan to head its internal audit unit.

Nancy Asiko Onyango will be the new director of the monetary body's Office of Internal Audit and Inspection (OIA) effective February 2018, replacing Clare Brady after a near four-year tenure.

Her appointment was announced Monday by IMF managing director Christine Lagarde, who expressed confidence in the Kenyan national's ability to steer the key unit.

“Ms Onyango brings to the Fund more than 25 years of experience in internal audit, strategic risk management, corporate governance and IT risk management,” Ms Lagarde said in a statement today.

Ms Onyango has worked in several sectors, including financial services, and with several governments, development agencies and non-governmental organisations.

Most recently, she was the CEO of Nairobi-based Reliance Risk Advisory Solutions.

Before that, she was a Partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (Kenya) and also served as EY's Governance, Risk and Compliance Leader for Africa.

Ms Onyango is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and holds a doctorate degree in Business Administration from the United States International University — Africa (USIU) in Nairobi in conjunction with the Columbia Business School, specialising in gender leadership and organisational change management.

She also holds several international certifications from global institutions such as the Information Systems Audit and Control Association and the Institute of Internal Auditors.

She currently sits on the boards of KCB Bank Group and Cytonn Investments.

Cytonn Investments plans to list by introduction on the Nairobi Securities Exchange’s Growth and Enterprise Market Segment before the end of March next year as the firm moves to grow its capital.

The move is aimed at diversifying the investment firm’s revenue sources.

“We expect to have listed by introduction by the first quarter of 2018,” Cytonn Investments chief executive officer Edwin Dande said.

Listing by introduction will allow the firm to put its shares on the exchange without necessarily raising money from the public.

“We want to first see how the shares trade and allow people a chance to get familiar with the company,” Dande said.

He added that the Initial Public Offering geared towards funding growth will be expected in 18-24 months after listing by introduction.

It would be interesting to look at theyre cashflow statement...stripping fair value gains there is an trading loss & why are staff costs so high like that?

Yes, there is trading loss but the example above is like comparing oranges to ferrari .@Njooro fails to realize that if there is a price increase in price of land, obviously the price of houses will go up. if you are in real estate biz, the gain in land is an actual gain to your main biz. While I understand @Njoro wanted to make it clear to a layman, the example given is soooooooo wrong since the kiosk trading activity is not related to the price of land.

I'm not an employee but since they've some of my money ,I follow them closely.

Explanation for staff costs

[tweet]https://mobile.twitter.com/kenyanwalstreet/status/911086089405816832[/tweet]

Incase you didnt know, they have lots of land, lots of shares in listed and some unlisted companies too. Lots of projects. And they are professionals, they do their homework before going into JVs

Gag?? 😂😂 Are you sure u understand what the word means? I support this company with the same motivation you have for your beloved kengen sir. And rightly so! Why cant I? My motivation is just like yours to Learn and make money.

Sparkly, posting an old tweet that was dealt with is hardly considered “dissecting”.

No one needs my permission to invest here or not but I do eagerly await any skeletons you may find as I have invested here.

In the meantime as people screamed “pyramid” here based on heresay vs “dissecting” this some of us have made 6 times our original amount in 2.5-3 year time frame. Heard mentality will never make you money.

since the property market is cooling off

The key indicators of a bubble are:

i. More people taking on more debt.

However, in Kenya today, the key constraint is access to credit as the government is crowding out the private sector given the 2016 interests rate cap law.

For instance, mortgage accounts were reported to have decreased by 1.5% by December 2016 to 24,085 from 24,458 the same period in 2015,

ii. Relaxed lending standards.

Despite the Kenyan government lowering interests rates, institutions have tightened their credit supply to the private sector, especially for long-term loans such as mortgages, as evidenced by the slowdown in private sector credit growth, at 2.0% in October 2017 compared to 4.6% in October 2016 and 19.5% in October 2015,

iii. Historically low interest rates.

From our case studies, interest rates declined to below 7%. In Kenya, The Bank Amendment Act of 2015 capped bank lending rates to a maximum of 14.0%, which is 4% above the Central Bank Rate that has remained at 10% throughout 2017,

iv. High demand from high levels of speculation.

Unlike in a bubble where most of the demand is driven by speculators, in Kenyan the demand is driven by real demand, which is estimated to be at least 200,000 units p.a.

v. Incredible rise in house prices.

As is evidenced in our case studies, a housing bubble is characterized by most often than not, a triple digit growth in prices and as per the IMF standards, the decline in a bust must be at least 14% over a period of 16 quarters.

In Kenya however, the prices are growing, albeit softening, with 2016 recording an average appreciation rate of 7.4%, which slowed to 3.8% in 2017, as per the Cytonn Residential Report 2017.

From the above it is clear that the real estate sector in Kenya is not in a bubble based on the five indicators.

(Instead) The sector is experiencing the normal real estate cycles, and the rapid price increments being witnessed are a result of low supply and high demand.

Thus, it still presents attractive opportunities for investors.