Qatar National Bank (QNB) has increased its stake in Ecobank Transna-tional Incorporated (ETI) by more than 60 per cent in the past two years to become the bank’s second largest shareholder. The last audit of Ecobank for the period ended December 31, 2015 revealed this.
The increase in QNB’s stake in Ecobank significantly increased when the Qatari institution decided to exercise its option to convert its preference shares to ordinary shares before the expiration of the dealine for conversion.
Initially, QNB acquired 1.77 billion ordinary shares of ETI, which gave the Qatari bank 11.1 per cent equity stake in ETI as well as 732.28 million preference shares.
Under the terms on conversion of preference shares, preference shareholders had the right, exercisable at any time between of October 2014 to October 2016, to convert their preference shares into ordinary shares in the company at the rate of one preference share to 0.76923 ordinary share.
QNB exercised this option, converting its 732.28 million preference shares to 563.26 million ordinary shares, increasing its stake from 11.1% to 18%, making it second largest shareholder after Nedbank Group Limited, which controls the largest equity stake of 20.7 per cent.
