Senegalese billionaire oil heir Moussa Diao leads $1 billion buyout of African fuel giant Oryx

Moussa Diao, the Senegalese chief executive of Oryx Energies, has led a management buyout of the Swiss-based fuel distributor that values the company at about $1 billion, taking control of one of Africa's largest independent sellers of petrol, diesel and cooking gas.

Diao and Hervé Bouvet, the company's trading manager, bought a majority stake from founder Jean-Claude Gandur, the Swiss-British billionaire whose AOG group had owned the business, Bloomberg reported on Oct. 8. The size of the stake, the lenders behind the deal and how it was financed were not disclosed.

The buyout ends a contest for the company. Simon Tiemtoré, the American-Burkinabe financier who chairs Lilium Capital, had sought to buy Oryx's network of about 400 service stations along with its commercial fuel, liquefied petroleum gas and lubricants businesses, according to The Africa Report. Those talks collapsed.

An insider takes over

Diao has spent more than two decades at Oryx and became chief executive in 2019. He is the son of Abdoulaye "Baba" Diao, one of Senegal's best-known oil businessmen. Bouvet previously held senior roles at Addax Energy, the group's trading arm.

Oryx imports, stores, distributes and sells fuel across Africa. It says it operates in more than 30 African countries, with established businesses in 17, and runs more than 410 service stations, 11 major terminals including Bargny in Senegal, and about 947,000 cubic meters of storage. It sells about 9.4 million tonnes of petroleum products a year and employs more than 1,800 people.

Its biggest markets are in West Africa, including Senegal, Côte d'Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mauritania. It sells petrol, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, lubricants and marine fuel.

The deal comes as fuel importers across Africa contend with volatile prices linked to the conflict in the Middle East, which has pushed up costs for countries that rely on imported refined products.

Gandur's exit

Gandur founded the group in 1987 with three partners, trading oil out of Geneva before building a downstream business in Africa. In 2009 he sold Addax Petroleum, the group's exploration and production arm, to China's Sinopec for about $7.2 billion, then the largest foreign takeover by a Chinese company. In 2013 the group combined its trading and distribution operations under the Oryx Energies name.

The sale hands one of the continent's largest fuel networks to a management team led by a Senegalese executive.

Tiemtoré's second miss

The collapse of his Oryx bid is the second high-profile setback for Tiemtoré. He earlier failed in an attempt to buy a 61.4% stake in Oragroup, a banking group operating in 12 West and Central African countries with about $7.7 billion in assets at the end of 2022. Jeune Afrique described his move on Oryx as a failed incursion.