Deal #1999 Version #56583

Feronia acquired these plantations by buying 76% of Plantations et Huileries du Congo (PHC, registered in DR Congo). Feronia purchased these shares from Unilever. The company which purchased these shares was Feronia JCA Ltd, a Cayman Islands subsidiary of Feronia Inc. DRC passed a new Law on the Funadmaental Principles of Agriculture (loi portant principes fondamentaux relatifs à l’agriculture) on June 24, 2012 that states, under Article 16, that land can only be attributed to companies that are majority owned by national investors. Company plans to list on the British stock exchange in 2018. Mafuta Investment Holdings fund and Kuramo Capital have injected $ 17.5 million into the capital- October 2017 (% share unknown as yet). By 2018, Feronia-PHC had received at least 118 million US dollars, including 49 million in loans approved by German, Belgian and Dutch development banks in 2015. "They approved the loans despite NGO reports and statements from community leaders in all three plantation areas who had drawn their attention to the illegitimate and possibly illegal nature of the concession contracts as well as the appalling working conditions for labourers on the plantations and the many broken promises to communities affected by the plantation concessions." A complaint was submitted through the DEG complaints mechanism. On January 7th, 2018 it determined that the complaint was admissible under the criteria of the Independent Complaints Mechanism Policy, and the case is under review. In June 2019 Golden Oil Holdings Limited ("GOHL"), a wholly owned Mauritius special purpose vehicle subsidiary of African Agriculture Fund L.L.C. ("AAF”) announces that it has acquired common shares representing approximately 13.55%. In May 2020, Feronia announes that they are looking to restrucutre the investors/ shareholdering structure in this deal or alterantively sell the operating company to an affiliate of KKM. However, they also clearly state that this is not a final decision and the plans may still change. "A critical juncture was reached when Feronia filed for bank-ruptcy in August of 2020. Instead of exploring ways to grant the communities their long held request for the return of the land, development banks handed over the assets that Fero-nia held in PHC to Straight KKM, a Mauritius-based private equity fund, for a cash payment of US$500,000, an assump-tion of a portion of the company’s debt to the development banks, and a commitment to invest US$10 million into the company. Through the sale, the development banks involved – UK’s CDC Group, Germany’s DEG, the Dutch FMO, Belgian BIO, and the Emerging Africa Investment Fund (EAIF) agreed to write off large portions of their previous loans to the com-pany. However, these banks remain involved in the project as lenders. Straight KKM is owned by various funds affiliated with Kura-mo Capital Management, which claims to be Africa’s “leading independent investment management firm.” Several institu-tional players are major investors in Kuramo funds, including: The University of Michigan Endowment, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, the South African Government Em-ployees Pension Fund and Public Investment Corporation, the Royal County of Berkshire Pension Scheme, among others." (Oakland Institute, 2021).