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“I was just in London and I am going to the U.S. from here, and then to China,” Nigel Chanakira said in an interview in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt.

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KINGDOM Financial Holdings Ltd., a Zimbabwe-based holding company, has started an international roadshow as it seeks to raise capital through bond and equity investments, its chief executive officer said today.

“I was just in London and I am going to the U.S. from here, and then to China,” Nigel Chanakira said in an interview in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. “We are now open for negotiations and we are talking to investors.”

Kingdom Financial merged with Meikles Africa Ltd. in January last year to form Kingdom Meikles Africa Ltd., which owns the country’s biggest supermarket chain and best-known hotel. The merged entity will separate after disagreements between John Moxon, who was the biggest shareholder in Meikles Africa, and Chanakira, Kingdom Meikles’ former chief executive officer, the company said on June 26.

Following the settlement, “I need to halve my 48 percent” share, Chanakira said, referring to a Zimbabwean law which restricts individuals from holding more than 25 percent of a company’s shares. “I am looking for a strategic partner.”

Zimbabwe is attempting to revive its economy after a decade of political turmoil and recession under the leadership of President Robert Mugabe, whose Zimbabwe African National Union- Patriotic Front party controlled parliament from independence in 1980 until March 2009, when it lost elections to Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change.

In February, Mugabe signed the Indigenization and Empowerment Act, under which companies with assets worth more than $500,000 must be 51 percent black-owned within five years. Chanakira said the law “muddies the waters” as the nation seeks to jumpstart its economy. Zimbabwe ministers will review the indigenization law, Industry Minister Welshman Ncube said on March 3.

“It is clearly not a conducive law when we are shy of foreign direct investment,” said Chanakira. “We want more investments and jobs, but all this does, in addition to the political haggling we’ve had, is that it pulls us back and makes us look less attractive” to foreign investors.

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