Senegalese executive Moussa Diao has led a management buyout of Swiss-based fuel distributor Oryx Energies in a deal that values the business at approximately $1 billion, marking a major ownership shift at one of Africa’s largest independent downstream energy companies.
Diao, the company’s chief executive, and Hervé Bouvet, its trading manager, acquired a majority stake from founder Jean-Claude Gandur, whose AOG group previously owned the business, according to Bloomberg’s October 8 report. The financial structure of the transaction, including the stake acquired and the lenders involved, has not been disclosed.
The buyout follows the collapse of a competing bid by Simon Tiemtoré, the American-Burkinabe financier and chairman of Lilium Capital, who had sought to acquire Oryx’s network of service stations and its commercial fuel, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and lubricants operations.
Diao brings more than two decades of experience at Oryx Energies to the transaction. He became chief executive in 2019 and is the son of Abdoulaye “Baba” Diao, a prominent Senegalese oil businessman.
Bouvet, his co-investor in the buyout, previously held senior positions at Addax Energy, the group’s trading arm.
Their acquisition places the company under the control of executives with extensive experience in its operations and African energy markets.
Oryx imports, stores, distributes and sells petroleum products across the continent. The company says it operates in more than 30 African countries, with established businesses in 17 markets, and runs more than 410 service stations.
Its infrastructure includes 11 major terminals, including the Bargny terminal in Senegal, and storage capacity of approximately 947,000 cubic metres. The group sells around 9.4 million tonnes of petroleum products annually and employs more than 1,800 people.
Its product portfolio includes petrol, diesel, LPG, lubricants and marine fuel.
Oryx has a significant presence in West Africa, with key markets including Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Mali, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Mauritania.
The management buyout comes at a time when African fuel importers are navigating volatile international energy prices and higher supply costs, amid geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.
For Oryx, continued investment in distribution infrastructure, storage and supply networks will remain important to serving markets that depend heavily on imported refined petroleum products.
Gandur founded the group in 1987 alongside three partners, initially trading oil from Geneva before expanding into fuel distribution and other downstream operations across Africa.
In 2009, he sold Addax Petroleum, the group’s exploration and production business, to China’s Sinopec for approximately $7.2 billion. The transaction was then described as the largest foreign takeover by a Chinese company.
In 2013, the group consolidated its trading and distribution operations under the Oryx Energies name.
The latest transaction marks Gandur’s exit from a business he helped build into a major independent supplier of petroleum products across African markets.
The Oryx acquisition represents another setback for Tiemtoré, whose proposed purchase of the fuel distributor’s network and related businesses did not proceed.
He previously failed in an attempt to acquire a 61.4% stake in Oragroup, a banking group operating across 12 West and Central African countries that reported approximately $7.7 billion in assets at the end of 2022.
With the management buyout, Oryx’s ownership now shifts to an executive team led by a Senegalese chief executive, placing the company’s next phase of growth under leaders already familiar with its operations and the markets it serves.
