NBM wins Indebank bid
National Bank of Malawi (NBM) emerged the preferred bidder for the recapitalisation of the partially-State owned Indebank beating two other bidders, Public Private Partnership Commission (PPPC) has announced.
PPPC chief executive officer Jimmy Lipunga said this at a news conference in Blantyre on Friday saying the decision was made after considering the recommendations committee.
Said Lipunga: “The commission concluded the evaluation of the best and final offers from the three highest conforming bids, FMB and a consortium of Prudential Holdings Limited and NBM where NBM came out as preferred bidder, a position approved by the commission in line with the PPP Act.”
He said the commission will immediately go into negotiations to commence within the next two weeks.
Said Lipunga: “Once we finalise the negations, we will deploy a memorandum through the Ministry of Finance to approve the transaction, including investment agreement and formal handover.”
He said the price offered by NBM is in line with an independent evaluation that the commission received but it will have to validate the business plan and go into various elements and see what the NBM has in the offing.
“It is our desire to see Indebank continue as a standalone bank rather than being absorbed into NBM. Interestingly, it is pleasing that NBM is committing to that,” he said.
According to Lipunga, the commission approved that the strategic equity investor takes up a shareholding of between 51 and 75 percent, hinting that the actual allocation will depend on the level of capital subscription and negotiations.
He said the equity investor will be required to inject additional capital to satisfy the Basel II supervisory provision as required by the Reserve Bank of Malawi (RBM).
“The investor [NBM] will need to demonstrate a commitment to address strategic and operational obligations, especially as they relate to information technology, marketing, product innovations, competitiveness and human resource retention training and development,” he said.
Asked to comment on the Malawi Savings Bank (MSB) sale, Lipunga said he is not liberty to do so in the face of a court order. He said conditions between the two banks are not the same.
“Indebank by themselves without the PPPC and government were already looking for an investor. When we got an instruction from the Finance Ministry to facilitate the recapitalisation, the bank was already in the spirit of the transaction,” he said.
NBM is a listed company on the Malawi Stock Exchange (MSE) and in the financial year ended December 2014, the bank registered a profit-after-tax of K14.5 billion.
In Indebank, government has 41.38 percent, Admarc Investment Holdings holds 25.62 percent, Press Trust 30 percent and employees have 2.95 percent.
