Kuwait Finance House (KFH) announced that the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK) has granted its initial approval for the merger with Ahli United Bank – Bahrain (AUB Bahrain), according to a bourse disclosure on Wednesday.
In January, KFH said it gave initial approval for the average of stock exchange with AUB Bahrain at a rate of 2.33 shares of AUB’s in return for one share in KFH.
The banks have been in talks since mid-2018, and while several other banks are in the midst of consolidating, a merger between the two could become the first cross-border tie-up between Gulf banks in recent years.
In July 2018, KFH and AUB Bahrain signed an agreement to merge their operations with assets valued at $92 billion.
Plans for potential mergers between banks in the Gulf have increased in the past two or three years after more moderate levels of oil prices hit state revenue, pushed up bad loans and squeezed bank profit margins.
Source Zawya