Bidvest has agreed to sell Bidvest Bank to Nigeria's Access Bank for R2.8 billion as part of the diversified industrial group's restructuring of its financial services division. According to reports, Access Bank will also snap up the retail and wealth divisions of Standard Chartered Bank in Botswana, Uganda and Zambia in the next 18-24 months.
Headquartered in Nigeria, Access Bank is a full-service commercial bank with more than 60 million customers, serviced through a network of over 700 branches in 23 countries across three continents. It employs more than 8,400 people and had shareholders' equity of more than $1.7 billion as at December 2023, with customer loans of $6 billion and deposits of $12.5 billion.
The transaction between Bidvest and Access Bank is subject to the required regulatory approvals.
"Access Bank meets our original principle to provide reassurance for the continued sustainability and prosperity of Bidvest Bank," Bidvest Group CEO Mpumi Madisa said in a statement announcing the deal.
"This provides an exciting future for Bidvest Bank, enabling it to advance, scale up and grow in today's fast-changing, technology-driven and highly competitive financial sector."
Access Bank has been operating in South Africa since 2021, following its acquisition of Grobank Limited. In Botswana, Access Bank entered the market through the Ocrober 2021 acquisition of BankABC.