QNB to acquire Turkish bank

22 December 2015

Flagship Qatari bank to enter new market

Qatar National Bank (QNB) has agreed to purchase a 99.81 per cent stake in Turkey’s Finansbank for €2.7bn ($2.94bn).

The acquisition, from the National Bank of Greece, is expected to conclude in the first half on 2016.

Finansbank is the fifth-largest private bank in Turkey. In mid-2015, it had assets of $29bn, a loanbook worth $19.5bn and $14.6bn in deposits. It is rated Ba2 and BBB- by US-based Moody’s Investors Services and UK-based Fitch Ratings.

QNB will use its own funds for the acquisition. The bank reported net profits of QR8.7bn ($2.4bn) for the first nine months of 2015. It has assets of QR521bn.

The acquisition has been approved by the boards of both banks and the Greek regulator, but is still subject to other regulatory approvals.

The deal continues QNB’s strategy of entering large, high-growth markets through acquisitions.

It raised its stake in pan-African Ecobank Transnational to 20 per cent in 2014.

In 2013, QNB acquired a 97.12 per cent stake in the second-largest private bank in Egypt, QNB Alahli.

The group also owns a 35 per cent stake in Jordan’s Housing Bank for Trade & Finance (HBTF), 40 per cent of the UAE’s Commercial Bank International, 99.96 per cent of QNB Tunisia and an 82.59 per cent stake in QNB Indonesia, among others.

QNB Capital and the US’ JP Morgan are joint financial advisors. The UK’s Clifford Chance is acting as lead legal counsel and Yegin Çiftçi Attorney Partnership is the local legal counsel.

This is the second Gulf acquisition of a Greek banking asset in the Middle East to be announced in 2015. Al-Ahli Bank of Kuwait (ABK) acquired 98.5 per cent of Piraeus Bank Egypt (PBE), paying Greece’s Piraeus Bank $150m.

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