Jordan investors set to buy Arab Bank stake

A Jordanian consortium has bid for Saudi Oger’s 20 percent stake in Arab Bank Group after the family of Saudi Arabia’s Fawaz Alhokair dropped its own $1.1 billion (SR4.13 billion) offer, banking sources said.
A deal with investors led by Arab Bank Group’s chairman Sabih Al-Masri, a leading Jordanian businessman with extensive holdings in banking and hotels, could be imminent, they said.
The Alhokair family was in talks to buy the stake in the Jordan-based bank, one of the Arab world’s largest privately owned banks, after Saudi Oger began seeking buyers to help ease cashflow problems.
The Arab Bank sale was expected to help Saudi Oger repay a $1.03 billion loan from regional and international banks due to mature in February. The Alhokair family and Saudi Oger were not immediately available for comment.
“A transaction has been finalized. Sabih Masri has put together a Jordanian led deal to purchase the shares from Oger after the Alhokair offer played itself out,” one source said, adding that the valuation was based on the bank’s share price.
Arab Bank’s shares closed at 6.06 dinars ($8.5) on Monday and bankers said the Alhokair family’s bid had been driven by the bank’s stock market value being well below its book value.
The banks’ 40 percent stake in Saudi Arabia’s Arab National Bank, was also a major attraction for the Alhokair family group, which is best known for its fashion retailing business. Two sources said the Jordanian consortium was not bidding with Alhokair and there was no auction.
“Alhokair is out for whatever reason and Sabih Al-Masri is in... it’s not a competition. The Jordanian group did not come in with a higher price,” one said.
It was not clear what had ended an Alhokair deal, but Jordanian authorities, who consider Arab Bank a pillar of the country’s economy, had resisted any non-Jordanian investor becoming the single largest shareholder in the bank.
“There has historically been a battle to keep the bank as Jordanian as possible. Whoever buys 20 percent and becomes the largest shareholder surely would influence it. This would have be alarming to the Jordanians,” a senior financial source said.
Some board members had questioned why a foreign investor should buy the stake at a fire sale price, a third source said.
Local investors were also angry that Alhokair was not seeking to buy the stake with its own money but mostly with cash raised from a banking syndicate, with the shares as collateral.
Arab Bank has assets of more than $46 billion, 600 branches on five continents and a reputation for withstanding political upheaval.

Source: Arab News