ABC minorities spurn Atlas Mara offer
Brian Benza | Friday November 21, 2014 13:52
In September, Atlas Mara made a mandatory offer to minority shareholders of ABCH constituting 4,2 percent of the banking group’s share capital.
This came after Atlas Mara had acquired 95,8 percent in the banking group with operations in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique and Tanzania under the BancABC brand.
In a statement released on Tuesday Atlas Mara announced that it has achieved a total of 98.7 percent ownership in BancABC up from 95.8 percent in September.
This leaves only 1.3 percent shareholding out of Atlas Mara hands representing 3.34 million shares.
“The period for accepting the offer expired on 7 November 2014 and Atlas Mara acquired 7,040,997 shares in the Company, which represents an additional 2.74 percent of the Company’s current share capital.
“Out of the aforementioned tendered shares, 2,389,255 (0.93 percent) shares were acquired from shares listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange and a further 4,651,742 (1.81 percent) shares listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange,” read a statement from Atlas Mara.
Atlas Mara was offering $0,82(P7.4) per share or swap one ABCH share for 0,0683 Atlas Mara share.
The increase in Atlas Mara’s stake in BancABC comes, as Atlas Mara remains optimistic in the prospects of financial services growth in Sub-Saharan Africa.
It says it has the ability to establish an institution, which, through a combination of experience, operational expertise and access to capital, liquidity and funding, can become a leader in the sector.
“2014 will represent an acquisitions and integration-oriented year. The expansion of Atlas Mara’s executive leadership enables the company to drive operational efficiencies, improve the control and governance environments and address shortcomings in the credit processes in order to position the company for future growth,” Atlas Mara said in an interim management statement published this year.
Atlas Mara was born out of a combination of Bob Diamond’s Atlas Merchant Capital LLC and African entrepreneur Ashish Thakkar’s Mara Group Holdings Limited.
Former Barclays PLC Chief executive Diamond is looking to take his former bank’s strategy of focusing on expanding African operations with acquisitions spread across the continent.
Apart from the $265 million ABC deal, early this month Atlas upped its stake in Union Bank of Nigeria from about nine percent to just below 30 percent for a $270 million consideration.
It later signed a deal to buy 77 percent of the Development Bank of Rwanda, establishing a platform for Atlas’ expansion into the east African region.
Union Bank is one of Nigeria’s most established banks with a network of 340 branches across the country. It was hard hit in Nigeria’s 2009 banking crash and was one of eight lenders that had to be bailed out – to the tune of $4bn – by the central bank.