Kuwait Finance House agreed to buy Bahrain’s Ahli United for about $11.6 billion, a deal almost four years in the making and one that would rank among the banking sector’s biggest of the year.
The potential combination, a rare cross border deal in the Middle East, would create the Gulf’s seventh-largest lender with $115 billion in assets. Under the revised terms, KFH will offer one share for every 2.695 shares of Ahli, implying an offer price of $1.04 per share -- a 13% premium to the stock’s Wednesday close.
Kuwait’s central bank, which in 2020 asked KFH to reassess the deal as the pandemic spread, approved the combination on Wednesday. The initial offer in 2019 was valued at $8.8 billion, with KFH offering 1 share for every 2.32558 shares in Ahli.
Since then, Kuwait Finance House shares have risen 66%, valuing the lender at $25.8 billion. Ahli is up 27% in the same period, giving the bank a market value of $10.3 billion.
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