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Casablanca – British multinational banking and financial services company Barclays completed sale of business in Egypt on October 4 to Morocco’s leading bank Attijariwafa Bank.
As part of Barclays’ strategy to shift the focus toward the U.S. and British markets and sell its operations in Africa, the British lender sold Attijariwafa Bank its business in Egypt.
According to Reuters, the British lender stated that this deal represents a decrease of around $2.55 billion in Barclays’ risk-weighted assets (RWA), increasing its core capital ratio by 0.1 percent.
Attijariwafa Bank published a communiqué on its official website on October 4, announcing the business agreement with the British lender:
“Attijariwafa bank and Barclays Bank PLC announced that they have signed today in Cairo an agreement whereby Attijariwafa bank will acquire 100% of the share capital of Barclays Bank Egypt from Barclays Bank PLC, subject to regulatory approvals from, among others, the Central Bank of Egypt and Central Bank of Morocco.”
Speaking about the Moroccan bank’s reason for operating in Egypt, Chairman and CEO of Attijariwafa Bank Mr. Mohamed El Kettani points out that the Egyptian banking market represents a “significant growth prospects in the medium and long term.”
“Barclays Bank Egypt, thanks to its positioning, highly talented management and motivated workforce, strong capitalization and clean balance sheet is the ideal platform to roll out Attijariwafa bank’s universal banking model in Egypt,” he said.
Attijariwafa Bank’s interest in the Egyptian market intersects with Barclay’s strategy, undertaken by its Chief Executive Jes Staley, to withdraw from African markets in order to make the bank structure more basic and improve shareholder’s returns.
Attijariwafa Bank, which officially expressed its interest in the Egyptian banking market last March, has been following an ambitious development program with the aim of acquiring banks in Tunisia, Congo, Senegal and other African countries.
