The Saudi National Bank (SNB) announced the completion of the “largest and fastest merger” in the region between the National Commercial Bank (NCB) and Samba Financial Group.
The merger process amounted to $239 billion, which is the largest in the region, SNB said in a statement.
The statement indicated that the merger will establish a financial power with local and regional competitive capabilities and consolidate the position of the Saudi banking sector at the regional and global levels.
National Bank
The statement explained that all stages of the merger process were successfully completed, leading to the establishment of the largest banking entity in the Kingdom, with assets exceeding 900 billion riyals ($239 billion), and a capital base of 44.78 billion Saudi riyals ($11.92 billion).
The last phase of the merger was completed with success within nine months since the legal launch of the new entity on April 1, 2021, the statement said.
The merger process included transferring the accounts of individual clients and corporate clients, transferring clients of the treasury sector and clients of NCB and Samba Capital, in addition to transferring other administrative sectors and merging branches from both banks.
The bank opened accounts for more than 1.4 million new accounts for individual customers. This constitutes 100% of the total individual customers. For corporate customers, the bank opened accounts for more than 11,000 customers who make up 100% of customers from the category of small and medium companies.
The bank completed the opening of and activating the accounts of 100% of the category of major companies.
Merger deal
As the merger deal announced in April of last year entered into force, the name of the bank was changed from the National Commercial Bank to the Saudi National Bank, and the listing of Samba shares on the local stock exchange was cancelled.
NCB had entered into merger negotiations with Riyad Bank, before amending them later.
The Saudi banking sector currently includes 10 local banks, and branches of 15 foreign banks.
The Extraordinary General Assembly approved on March 1, 2021, the merger agreement, which included an increase in the bank’s capital from 30 billion riyals to 44.78 billion riyals.
