Samba continued to grow, expanding its international presence by entering the United Kingdom in 1984, and creating one of the largest financial institutions in the Middle East after a merger with United Saudi Bank in 1999.īy 2004, Citibank had sold all of its remaining shareholding to local investors, making the Samba Financial Group a wholly Saudi owned subsidiary, looking to expand internationally. However, it wasn’t until 1980 that the Saudi American Bank (Samba) was formed as the result of a change in the law which required all foreign banks to be at least 60% Saudi owned. The origins of Samba go back to as early as 1955, when Citibank first established itself in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Which of these players will be successful? Profit looks at how good of a deal Samba really is, and which potential buyer has the best chance to close the deal. The Fatima Group has also thrown its hat in the ring, and perhaps most interestingly at least one fintech startup has made its intentions known. On the one hand there are two of Pakistan’s largest banks as claimants. So why didn’t they sell then? In one case, the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) was not comfortable with any such transaction (more on that later) and in the others there was a realisation of ‘why fix it if it ain’t broke’, and all three corrected course.īut Samba going up for sale offers a unique opportunity to a number of different players licking their lips at the prospect. That even one of these banks would be up for sale, let alone three simultaneously, was strange to say the least as all three were doing quite well at the time, infact, thriving and growing in the individual space that they had created for themselves over the years. This was a first in Pakistan’s banking history,a and the news was broken in these very pages back then and did not bounce to the extent that the banks, namely Bank Alfalah, Meezan Bank, and Faysal Bank, were indeed on the market, but neither was actually sold to a new buyer and all three are still being run under the same ownership structure. The other reason is that banks are hard to come by for people in the market shopping for one.īack in 2018, three major banks went up for sale. Why are there so many contenders to buy out the smallest commercial bank in Pakistan? For starters, it is a nice, clean, well-run operation. Samba Bank is up for sale, and the buyers are lining up waving cash in hand trying to get their hands on the bank.
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