From Bloomberg

Barclays Plc (BARC)’s South African unit said its investment bank plans to extend brokerage, equity trading and other services into the rest of the continent as part of a two-year plan to boost profit.

“We’re in the top 10 in Africa, we’ve got to get to the top five,” Stephen van Coller, head of Absa Capital, the Johannesburg-based investment bank of Barclays Africa Group Ltd. (BGA), said in a Jan. 27 interview. “Trading and investment banking very much has an African focus now.”

Absa Capital is bidding to win corporate clients and market share in Africa as competition from Rand Merchant Bank and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. reduces opportunities in South Africa. The expansion on the continent comes as Barclays, owner of 62.3 percent of the South African lender, cuts jobs in the U.K.

Absa Capital, South Africa’s largest seller of corporate debt, will target bond sales, Van Coller said. Dollar-bond sales from African governments and companies rose to a record $9.68 billion last year from $6.04 billion in 2012, Megan McDonald, Standard Bank Group Ltd. (SBK)’s head of debt primary markets, said on Oct. 31.

Following the South African unit’s purchase of Barclays’s operations in eight African countries last year, the investment bank has access to offices, customers, staff and information in nations including Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique and Botswana.

Written by Renee Bonorchis/Read more at Bloomberg