The majority shareholder in Union Bank of Nigeria, Atlas Mara Limited said it has completed the acquisition of Banque Populaire du Rwanda and Finance Bank Zambia.
The company disclosed this in its recently released half year 2016 result. The acquisition ‘Banque Populaire du Rwanda was completed in early January and Finance Bank Zambia at the end of June’.
The acquisition has now made Atlas Mara ‘Zambia’s second largest bank by branch numbers. We announced the appointment of Ben Dabrah as CEO for our new operations in Zambia. Ben joined us from Standard Chartered Bank and he also previously worked for Barclays Africa’.
Atlas Mara said ‘Integration plans to combine Finance Bank Zambia with our existing operations in Zambia are under way. Although much remains to be done, we are very excited about the growth prospects for this business given the increased scale of our operations’.
In terms of growth milestones, the bank said it has acheived the following in its business category:
‘In Corporate Banking, we saw net interest growth of 30.8% year-on-year driven by reduction in cost of funds, a decline in credit impairments of 32.3% reflecting improved credit processes and a focus on NPL recovery. A new transactional banking platform will be fully implemented in the second half which will boost non-funded income and support customer retention’.
‘Within Treasury and Markets, trade volumes are running at US$1 billion year to date (31% higher than at the comparable period last year), sales revenue growth is up 51%, trading revenue is up 121% and we have implemented a funds transfer pricing mechanism across all our subsidiary banks to ensure that all products are priced appropriately’.
‘Retail Banking has been steady. Recent developments include deployment of point of sale (POS) terminals in Zimbabwe which is yielding positive results and agency banking will be rolled out in Tanzania and Mozambique in the second half to deliver further customer and asset & liability growth’.
Atlas Mara only has holdings in Union Bank in Nigeria.
