Qatari bank acquires N36bn AMCON’s stake in Ecobank

By Ligali Abdul-lateef

Qatar National Bank, QNB, the Gulf’s largest bank, has acquired the stake of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria, AMCON, in Transnational Incorporated, ETI, amounting to $200 million (about N32 billion), which represents 12.5 percent stake in the bank.

No value for the transaction was given in QNB’s statement, which stated that the 12.5 percent stake would consist of current outstanding ordinary shares and the conversion of QNB’s convertible preference shares. Based on Ecobank’s share price of N20.01, the stake is estimated to worth around N36.25 billion.


The transaction was concluded yesterday when the Ecobank shares were transferred to QNB at N20.01 each. This, according to Thomson Reuters data, makes the Gulf’s state bank the second-largest shareholder in Ecobank after South Africa’s state-owned Public Investment Corporation.

AMCON acquired the stake after Ecobank merged its Nigerian operations with failed lender Oceanic Bank, which AMCON helped to recapitalise, before the Ecobank takeover. With the sale, AMCON, the second-largest shareholder in Ecobank, has divested its stake from the bank.

QNB has said it wants to become the largest bank in the Middle East and Africa by 2017 – it is currently second in terms of assets, behind South Africa’s Standard Bank.
The bank’s chief financial officer, Ramzi Mari, told Reuters in February it was looking for acquisition targets in Turkey, Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa to help achieve that goal.

It is the second acquisition the Qatari lender has made in the last two years in Africa: in March 2013, it completed the purchase of Societe Generale’s Egyptian business for $2 billion.