Barclays now holds voting control in Absa

JOHANNESBURG – Britain’s Barclays Plc has pushed its stake in South Africa’s biggest consumer bank Absa to 56,1 per cent, giving it voting control of the banking group, the groups said yesterday.

Barclays – which paid about 27,87 billion rand for a 53,96 per cent stake in Absa on July 27 – said it had acquired a further 14,5 million shares on Monday, bringing its total stake to 56,1 per cent. Barclays has set itself a floor target of a stake of 56,5 per cent in Absa to ensure it still holds a controlling stake in the banking group when preference shares – issued to fund a black investor group’s purchase of a 10 per cent stake in Absa – are vested in a couple of years’ time.The Absa deal is Barclays’s biggest investment outside its UK home market and marked Britain’s third-biggest banking group’s return to retail banking in South Africa after an absence of 18 years.Absa has said it aims to be the biggest bank in Africa within five years.Its South African rival, Standard Bank , is currently the biggest bank on the continent in terms of assets.Barclays was at one time the biggest bank in South Africa, but sold the business for a loss after critics, including British students, aid group Oxfam and Oxford colleges boycotted the bank because of South Africa’s white minority rule.Absa is South Africa’s biggest retail bank.- Nampa-ReutersBarclays has set itself a floor target of a stake of 56,5 per cent in Absa to ensure it still holds a controlling stake in the banking group when preference shares – issued to fund a black investor group’s purchase of a 10 per cent stake in Absa – are vested in a couple of years’ time.The Absa deal is Barclays’s biggest investment outside its UK home market and marked Britain’s third-biggest banking group’s return to retail banking in South Africa after an absence of 18 years.Absa has said it aims to be the biggest bank in Africa within five years.Its South African rival, Standard Bank , is currently the biggest bank on the continent in terms of assets.Barclays was at one time the biggest bank in South Africa, but sold the business for a loss after critics, including British students, aid group Oxfam and Oxford colleges boycotted the bank because of South Africa’s white minority rule.Absa is South Africa’s biggest retail bank. – Nampa-Reuters