Saudi Arabia’s Public Pension’s Agency (PPA) has increased its stake in local bank Samba to 12.4 per cent, according to information released by the Saudi Stock Exchange (Tadawul).

On 12 September the PPA purchased an additional 2.2 per cent stake in the firm, in a deal worth a total of SR841.5m ($224.4m). It has not been revealed who the stake was purchased from, although Maan al-Sanea, chairman of the Saad Group, which is in defaults on billions of dollars of debt, has not decreased his stake in the bank from 7.8 per cent.

In January this year Prince al-Waleed bin Talal’s Kingdom Holding Company sold its 5 per cent stake in Samba for $1.2bn to the PPA to raise money to repay debt. Kingdom had held the stake in Samba since 1988 (MEED 08:05:09).