Bob Diamond's bid to buy up Barclays Africa suffers setback but don't count him out

Former Barclays boss Bob Diamond looks to have suffered a body blow in his pursuit of the African part of the business he used to run.

Carlyle Group, the private equity firm, has pulled out of a consortium with the American banker, along with entrepreneur Ashish Thakkar and other unnamed investors that was set up to bid for Barclays Africa.

Mr Diamond is one of those businessmen who see the continent as the next hot investment story, believing that the African Lion will one day be roaring alongside the Asian Tiger and that getting in now will make them absurdly wealthy.

Unfortunately, the journey to that destination was always going to be a bumpy one. Sufficiently bumpy in the case of Mr Diamond, as his latest successor as chief executive of Barclays pulled the plug on Africa.

Jes Staley had barely got his feet under his desk before he’d decided that Barclays would be better off focussing on being a Transatlantic rather than a truly global banking business.

He’s probably not terribly upset to see Mr Diamond’s jeep hitting a pothole while out on safari. It would be rather embarrassing to have to put up with the one of his predecessors making a success of a business he’s trying to offload.

But is Mr Diamond really down? I’m told Carlyle pulled out some time ago, although its departure has only now become public. Its involvement had looked questionable after a deputy governor of the South African Reserve Bank said they were uncomfortable with private equity companies gobbling up stakes in the country’s financial institutions. You can understand their misgivings.

A deep pocketed investor like Carlyle would, nonetheless, have been handy for Mr Diamond to have onside, but this isn’t over yet. Count him out at your peril.

He departed Barclays under a cloud as a result of the Libor interest rate scandal. Even had that not occurred, his addiction to eye popping bonus packages meant he’d been skating on thin ice with some of his investors.

Those bonuses didn’t always stack up when set against Barclays' performance on his watch nor did those that rained down like confetti upon his lieutenants.

So he disappeared off to New York for a while, only to resurface with a new company called Atlas Mara and a bold plan to create an African banking group to capitalise on the continent’s rise.

An inveterate deal hound, he pulled it off too, raising money from backers and floating the thing on the London Stock Exchange’s junior AIM market. Atlas Mara is not part of the consortium. Mr Diamond’s involvement is through Atlas Merchant Capital, his investment banking business. But it might find itself swept up into the deal if Mr Diamond pulls it off.

He’ll probably spend some serious time sweet talking South African regulators to satisfy them that his consortium has the capital they’ll want a new owner to have, and to demonstrate that he’s the right man to steward one of the country’s biggest banks.

But I’ve watched Mr Diamond for long enough to know that he has the capability to do that. In the meantime Barclays is expected to continue selling off shares in Barclays Africa to investors on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, which leaves Mr Diamond, watching, and waiting, and doing his damnedest to stitch up a partnership that might work. Don’t bet against him sparkling at the end of that process.