A New era looms for Islamic Bank of Britain as £24.1m takeover offer is recommended by its directors
THE long-awaited takeover saga at Birmingham-based Islamic Bank of Britain looks to be reaching its end game after its directors responded favourably to a £24.1m offer from Qatari bank Masraf Al Rayan (MAR).
The offer comes through MAR’s wholly owned subsidiary, Al Rayan (UK) Limited.
MAR’s offer was first muted in October 2012 when the previous offer from IBB’s majority shareholder Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB) lapsed.
The offer is being recommended by the independent IBB directors who consider it to be fair and reasonable.
Adel Mustafawi, group CEO of MAR, said, “As one of the leading banks in Qatar, we look forward to supporting the Islamic Bank of Britain in its growth plans by strengthening its balance sheet and position in the market.
“We believe together we can build a stronger bank that is more capable of exploiting the enormous business opportunities available in the UK market for the benefit of our customers, shareholders, employees and the economies we operate in.
“IBB will now be part of a fast growing group and will be a partner to an organisation with a clear focus on developing the business.”
Sultan Choudhury, interim managing director of IBB, said, “The offer for Islamic Bank of Britain from Al Rayan (UK) will provide IBB with a new parent company with ambitious plans to grow the bank and inject significant amounts of additional capital to fund that growth.
“The anticipated additional capital injections into IBB will result in significant dilution of minority shareholdings and shareholders are now being given the opportunity to exit by accepting the offer.”
The financial advisers to the Islamic Bank of Britain were Charles Cattaneo and Ian Stanway of Birmingham-based advisory firm Cattaneo and legal advice was provided by Keri Rees, Steven Hacking and Tom Milburn of Eversheds in Birmingham.
MAR received legal advice from Jason Zemmel and Stephen Hodgkins of CMS Cameron Mckenna in London.
Cattaneo said: “This deal has taken quite some time to consummate but MAR appears to be a good partner for IBB.
“They have ambitious plans to grow the bank and with the additional financial firepower MAR have available IBB should be able to get to the scale needed to turn around the ongoing losses it has suffered from since it was floated in October 2004.”
