Join on WhatsApp
Join on Telegram
Marrakech – Moroccan businessman Moulay Hafid Elalamy has taken 92.3% control of Arktika Capital AB, a Swedish licensed credit institution that buys and manages non-performing loan portfolios from banks and financial institutions across Europe. His son, Moulay Mhamed Elalamy, has been appointed CEO of the institution.
The acquisition was first reported by Africa Intelligence on May 22 and covered by outlets including Business Insider Africa. Le Desk later published a detailed breakdown of the ownership structure, revealing the full extent of Elalamy’s control.
The stake is held through a chain of Saham Group vehicles. The remaining minority is held by co-investors or legacy shareholders whose identities were not specified.
Africa Intelligence framed the deal as a recent acquisition carried out in complete discretion and never publicly announced by Saham Group. Le Desk contradicted that account, reporting that Elalamy did not acquire Arktika Capital but co-founded it.
According to Le Desk, the operation was structured over nine months from March to December 2025 through his family office, routing €11.35 million in fresh capital from Monaco through Dubai and Luxembourg to establish the Swedish bank from scratch.
Arktika Capital is a Category 4 bank under Sweden’s financial regulator Finansinspektionen. Its primary business is acquiring distressed loan portfolios from European banks at a discount and recovering value over time.
It also offers Swedish retail depositors fixed-term savings accounts through its Arktika Spar product, with interest rates between 2.00% and 2.25% across terms from three to 48 months. All deposits are covered by the Swedish state deposit guarantee scheme.
The appointment of Moulay Mhamed Elalamy as CEO extends a pattern of direct family management across Saham’s assets. The younger Elalamy led the group’s strategic development since 2018, overseeing the growth and listing of Majorel, its merger with Teleperformance, and the acquisition of Société Générale Maroc, now operating as Saham Bank.
The deal comes at a time of expansion in Europe’s non-performing loan market. Rising interest rates between 2022 and 2025 pushed delinquency rates higher across several European markets, increasing the supply of distressed portfolios available for purchase.
At the NPL Europe 2026 conference in London in April, industry participants flagged growing volumes of Stage 2 loans, credit exposures not yet classified as non-performing but showing early signs of stress, moving toward transaction.
Germany and France were identified as markets attracting particular investor attention, two countries where Elalamy’s Saham Group and TP already have commercial relationships.
The acquisition fits into a broader investment strategy Elalamy has built since selling Saham’s African insurance operations to Sanlam in 2018. He currently holds a 14.87% stake in TP, the Paris-listed customer relations company. Arktika Capital represents his most direct ownership of a regulated banking institution outside Morocco.
The acquisition positions Elalamy as one of the few African investors to own a regulated European banking institution outright, outside of a minority stake. The deal also gives Saham Group a regulated foothold in Europe’s expanding distressed debt market at a time of rising loan delinquencies across the continent.
Elalamy, 66, founded Saham from a call center business in Morocco in 1995 and built it into one of Africa’s largest diversified conglomerates. He does not appear on the Forbes 2026 billionaires list, though various media outlets have estimated his fortune at over $2 billion. Between 2013 and 2021, he served as Morocco’s Minister of Industry and Trade.
