In separate notices sent to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) today, Access Bank and Diamond Bank both announced they had obtained final approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to the proposed scheme of merger.Â
What next? : The Scheme is subject to the judicial sanction of the Federal High Court.
Concluded steps: Shareholders of both lenders approved the merger at Extra Ordinary General Meetings (EGMs) held on the 6th of March, 2019.
The two banks formally began the merger process with an announcement in December last year. Nairametrics, however, broke the news prior to that.
Terms of the mergerÂ
- The proposed merger would involve Access Bank acquiring the entire issued share capital of Diamond Bank in exchange for a combination of cash and shares in Access Bank via a Scheme of Merger.
- Based on this agreement by the boards of the two financial institutions, Diamond Bank shareholders will receive N3.13 per share.
- This will comprise a cash consideration of N1.00 per Diamond Bank share representing a total cash amount of N23.16 billion or $75.58 million.
- The allotment of 6.62 billion new Access Bank ordinary shares, representing the 2 new Access Bank ordinary shares for every 7 Diamond Bank shares.
Access bank closed at N5.80 in today’s trading session on the NSE, down 2.52%. Diamond Bank closed at N2.45, down 1.61%.
honestly i don’t knowwhat the ACCESS bank shareholders benefits from this acqusition which you people are calling merger. To me it is carrying of diamond bad liabilities and i hope it will not affect them in future. Diamond bank has always claim to be rich, as for me it was over priced at 330kobo- remember that was the best bidder whichich means others must have priced far cheaper.
To shareholders of ACCESS bank, this have cost them dividend pay for the year and worse is that there was no compensation of bonus scrip. Also those that benefitted from this acquistion is only diamond bank fullstop. Although access bank management are just only concern about the increment of the number of their branches to well aove 1000 by this acquisition, i hope the benefit surfaces in future.