This archive report was first published on 11 August 2020.
Published on August 11, 2020, Equity Group Holdings Plc has completed the acquisition of a majority stake in the Congolese lender Banque Commerciale Du Congo (BCDC) at a discounted price of $95 million.
The acquisition was initially announced in September last year, with Equity agreeing to acquire all 625,354 shares (66.53 percent) owned by Belgian entrepreneur George Arthur Forrest and family at a cost of $105 million. However, the final price included dividends declared after January 1, 2019, in respect of the financial year ending December 31, 2019, making the cum-dividend price per share $167.9.
Equity Bank, with over 14 million customers, has operations across the region in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, South Sudan, and the DRC. The lender has also increased its shareholding in Equity Bank Congo S.A (EBC) to 94 percent from 86 percent after acquiring an additional 7.6 percent stake held by the German state-owned development bank KfW.
Equity Group's Chief Executive James Mwangi said, 'We have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to acquire two of the most solid banks in the market.' He added, 'With the second and fourth-largest banks in the country being our subsidiaries, we are confident that amalgamation and merger of the two subsidiaries will produce a combined bank with a balance sheet in excess of $2 billion with the capacity and capability to contribute significantly to the development and transformation of the DRC.'
