Lebanon’s banking sector has grown to 30 per cent of the country’s GDP and, in the IMF’s words, “weathered recent regional and global crises well”. With margins slimming at home, its next trick should be deeper regional integration.
To that end, today’s move doesn’t see a Lebanese bank shopping abroad, but rather Egypt’s largest investment bank by market value, EFG Hermes, shopping in Lebanon. EFG has responded to the breakdown of its merger with one Lebanese bank - Bank Audi SAL-Audi Saradar Group, in which EFG sold its stake in January - by buying a smaller one, Credit Libanais.
EFG plans to buy a 65 per cent stake in Credit Libanais for $542m, with an option for the next two years to purchase an additional 25 per cent. The price places a value of $834m on Credit Libanais’s total equity, which until now has been mostly owned by the Bahraini and Lebanese units of Capital Investment Holding.
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