Access Bank eyes more deals after buying standard chartered assets

Nigeria’s biggest lender, Access Bank Plc, is seeking more acquisitions in a bid to expand outside its home market, days after snapping up some African assets of Standard Chartered Plc, Bloomberg re- ported yesterday. Access Bank last week announced the purchase of the British giant’s entire operations in Angola, Cameroon, Gambia and Sierra Leone — countries where it’s already present. The lender is also taking over StanChart’s consumer, private and business banking division in Tanzania, widening its footprint to at least 17 markets.

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The parties didn’t dis- close a value for the deals. Access will continue its strategy to “build a railroad across the continent to sup- port trade and payments,” Chief Executive Officer Roosevelt Ogbonna said in an interview in London. “We’ll be going into a market, maybe as a greenfield, understand it better and then consolidate” through deals, he said. The lender remains largely absent in French- speaking African countries and will look to fol- low its expansion strategy in those markets as soon as opportunities present themselves, Ogbonna said. It announced the opening of an office in Paris in May.

As for StanChart, the disposals partly fulfill a plan unveiled last year to exit seven countries in Af- rica and the Middle East as part of a broader effort to focus on the region’s larg- est and fastest growing markets including Saudi Arabia and Egypt.