SBM Holdings won the bid against 12 shortlisted financial contenders for the acquisition including Kenya’s tier one banks who see Chase Bank as a salvageable and lucrative financial institution catering for the SME market.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Jan 29 – KCB Group is set to hand over Chase Bank to the regulator on February 15, 2018.
The move will see new owners of Chase Bank, SBM Holdings, take over its management.
KCB Group Chief Executive Joshua Oigara says the bank is currently doing handover notes.
KCB took over the management of Chase Bank in April 2016 after it was taken into receivership following a bank run that led to its collapse.
“We were unable to buy the bank because we were the managers already. Other suitors wanted a level playing field,” he said.
SBM Holdings won the bid against 12 shortlisted financial contenders for the acquisition including Kenya’s tier one banks who see Chase Bank as a salvageable and lucrative financial institution catering for the SME market.
The Mauritius-based holding company acquired Fidelity Bank, a tier three bank, in May 2017 through a subsidiary, SBM Bank Kenya and has plans to merge it with the newly acquired Chase Bank.
“With this proposed transaction, SBMH aims at consolidating its presence in East Africa and at gearing up the operations of SBMK, with the ambition of becoming a tier 1 bank in Kenya in the medium to long-term,” the group’s Chairman K.C Li Kwong Wing had announced in October last year.
SBM Group is one of the largest banking and financial services institutions listed on the Stock Exchange of Mauritius with a market capitalization of approximately $700 million as at 31 July 2017 and total assets of over $5 billion as at 30 June 2017.
