Stanbic eyes National Merchant Bank

Stanbic eyes National Merchant Bank

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By Rangarirai Mberi

SENIOR Standard Bank of South Africa executives are in Harare to negotiate a merger deal between Stanbic Bank and NMB, sources said last week.

The Standard newspaper reported that that Simphiwe Tshabalala, Standard Bank's deputy MD and head of Standard Bank Africa, arrived in the country Friday, together with two other top executives.

Sources familiar with the talks indicated that Standard Bank CEO Jacko Maree was part of the visiting team. The South Africans were scheduled to meet David Hatendi, CEO of NMB, and Paddy Zhanda, chairman of the bank.
Stanbic CEO Pindie Nyandoro, when sought for comment, was said to be in meetings all day Friday. Tsabalala's Johannesburg office confirmed he had travelled to Harare.

NMB and Stanbic Zimbabwe, Standard Bank's local business, opened merger talks last month. If successful, the merger will create perhaps Zimbabwe's largest financial institution by assets and market capitalisation. The two firms compete for the top end of the financial market, both of them following a deliberate strategy to concentrate on high net worth clients.

Stanbic becomes the second bank that NMB has sought to tie up with in the past six months. Only recently, NMB aborted merger talks with MBCA, which itself abandoned negotiations over a partnership with Trust Bank earlier in the year.
NMB in January began talks with MBCA, and was on the verge of sealing the deal when four founding NMB directors went into exile, as police sought their arrest over allegations they had externalised foreign currency.

Standard Bank is one of South Africa's four largest banks, with total assets, as at December 2003, standing at R540 billion. Old Mutual, which had led the Trust talks through its majority interests in MBCA, is the single largest shareholder in Standard Bank, with 14%. The bank has a presence in 16 African countries, outside of South Africa, and in 21 other countries across the world.

In June of last year, there was speculation that Standard Bank was keen to sell 30% of its interests in Stanbic. Former NMB deputy MD James Mushore was at that time rumoured to have been at the head of a consortium of businessmen that had reportedly sought to acquire the 30%.

Stanbic took over the Africa interests of ANZ Grindlays in 1992, and is said to have pledged then to cede some of its interests to local players. However, in most of the 16 African countries in which Stanbic conducts business, the bank's strategy has always been to own 100% of those businesses. Industry experts therefore wondered late last week whether the NMB deal would involve Stanbic shedding any of its local interests to the local bank.

"It's unlikely they (Standard Bank) will sell their interests - it would be against their Africa strategy. It is most likely going to be a takeover of NMB by Stanbic, which has perhaps the biggest asset base out there at the moment," a banker speculated late last week.

Stanbic is one one of the strongest banks on the market, with assets of $219 billion as at December. Bucking the sector-wide liquidity crunch, Stanbic has cash and cash equivalents amounting to $28 billion.
StandardBusiness
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