Commercial Bank of Qatar won initial central bank approval to buy a stake in a United Arab Emirates lender for $601 million, entering the second-largest Arab economy as it expands in the Gulf.
Commercial Bank, Qatar's second-largest lender by market value, won the approval from UAE and Qatar central banks to buy 40 percent of Sharjah-based United Arab Bank (UAB) for 7.75 dirhams ($2.11) per share, UAB said in a statement received on Sunday.
That is 7.8 percent more than UAB's closing share price on Thursday.
UAB, based in the third-largest member of the UAE federation and a neighbour of Dubai, had 711.72 million shares outstanding on March 21, according to Reuters data. The deal will be completed by the end of November, UAB said.
"Qatar Commercial is looking to diversify out of Qatar and the UAE is the obvious place to do it," said Raj Madha, a banking analyst at EFG-Hermes investment bank Dubai. "There's very strong growth in the economy in terms of lending."
The UAE's population is 4.1 million, compared with Qatar's 907,000.
Gulf Arab banks, buoyed by the economic windfall of record oil prices to the Gulf states, are increasingly looking outside their home markets where greater competition is encouraging them to expand through acquisitions and branch expansion.
National Bank of Kuwait, the Gulf's third-largest lender by market value, in August agreed to buy AlWatany Bank of Egypt with a $522 million bid, its second international purchase in three months. "It's all part of a growing trend of cross-border bank investments in the Gulf," Madha said.
Shares of UAB surged as much 4.2 percent in early trading to 7.49 dirhams, driving the Abu Dhabi index higher, before ending the day up 0.6 percent.
Commercial Bank said in August it had won approval from major UAB shareholders to buy a minority stake in and manage UAE, though it still needed central bank approval. [ID:nL16664999]
The purchase would be the biggest ever for Commercial Bank, which bought a 34 percent stake in National Bank of Oman in 2005. Commercial Bank Chief Executive Officer Andrew Stevens and Bertrand Giraud, UAB's chief executive, declined to give more details on Sunday.
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