This archive report was first published on 9 September 2019.
Published on September 9, 2019, the Competition Authority of Kenya (CAK) has ordered KCB Group to retain at least 90 percent of the employees it will have once it completes its buyout of National Bank of Kenya.
The country's biggest bank by assets, KCB Group, had planned to eliminate excess staff and branches in a bid to accelerate returns from the all-stock acquisition.
However, the regulator has now offered majority of the employees of the merged outfit temporary reprieve, requiring KCB to retain at least 90% of the employees for one-and-a-half years.
According to the regulator, KCB has 4,835 employees in Kenya while NBK's workforce currently stands at 1,356. This means KCB can still lay off 619 workers or 10 percent of the total staff count of 6,191.
The CAK approved the buyout partly because KCB will be in a position to support NBK whose performance has deteriorated over the years, with the lender breaching the minimum capital adequacy ratios.
