July 14, 2023/NGX

Access Holdings Plc has today announced that its flagship subsidiary Access Bank Plc and Standard Chartered Bank have entered into agreements relating to the acquisition of Standard Chartered’s majority shareholdings in its subsidiaries in Angola, Cameroon, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone, and its Consumer, Private & Business Banking business in Tanzania. 

Access Bank has also entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a majority equity stake in African Banking Corporation (Tanzania) Limited. BancABC Tanzania, a full-service commercial bank with over two decades of operations in Tanzania, is expected to consolidate the CPBB business onto its platform.

The Transactions present an opportunity for Access Bank to deepen its operations in existing and new countries of presence across Africa. In anticipation of the completion of the Transactions, Access Bank has made excellent progress in integration planning. It will work in the coming months with Standard Chartered and BancABC Tanzania to ensure seamless integration. The Transactions are expected to be completed over the next 12 months.

Tanzania’s banking regulator has granted its approval in favour of the BancABC Tanzania acquisition. Further regulatory approvals are anticipated in due course for the Transactions, including from the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Roosevelt Ogbonna, Managing Director of Access Bank Plc, said:

“For Access Bank, these Transactions represent a key step in our journey to build a strong global franchise focused on serving as a gateway for payments, investment, and trade within Africa and between Africa and the rest of the world as we continue to deliver on our vision to be the World’s Most Respected African Bank”.

Our 5-year growth plan will see us build a world-class payments gateway leveraging the power of technology and supported by a dynamic ecosystem of local and international partnerships, enabling us to serve global payments and remittances efficiently. With our recent European expansion and our deepened presence in key trading corridors across Africa, we will bridge the gap between cross-border and domestic transfers across all business segments. More importantly, we are committed to impacting our host communities positively.

Commenting on the Transactions, Dr. Herbert Wigwe, Group Chief Executive of Access Holdings said:

“The Transactions mark a significant leap forward for Access Bank and reinforce our strategy of strengthening our footprint across Sub-Saharan Africa to harness synergistic opportunities for sustainable income _ diversification, and profitability. We remain committed to our five-year strategy, which envisions our banking subsidiary emerging as a true leader in banking services across the African continent”.

Exotix Advisory acted as Financial Adviser, while DLA Piper acted as Legal Adviser to Access Bank on the Standard Chartered transaction.

The move is consistent with Access Holding’s recent Five-Year Strategy (2023-2027) launched in January 2023 and reviewed by Proshare Research.  The Access group is expected to concentrate its expansion plans in Africa; the group believes that it would leverage the large unbanked population on the continent, with over 60m in Nigeria and 370m in other African countries, with the target of becoming one of the top five banks on the continent by 2027. Analysts are optimistic that the group may meet projected numbers by cleverly navigating continental economic headwinds over the next five years to 2027.