By Omar Mohammed and Chijioke Ohuocha
NAIROBI/LAGOS, Jan 17 (Reuters) - Nigeria's top lender by
assets, Access Bank ACCESS.LG , has acquired Kenya's
Transnational Bank, the Kenyan central bank said on Friday.
The deal is the latest in the East African nation's banking
sector, where a cap on lending rates, tougher supervision by the
central bank and an over-proliferation of lenders has sparked a
consolidation round in the industry since 2017.
Access, which has assets of $16 billion, focuses on
corporate retail banking and it is expected to boost the growth
of Transantional's business, the Kenyan central bank said in a
statement.
"The acquisition is expected to strengthen the resilience of
Kenya's banking sector," it said.
It did not disclose the terms of the transaction.
Transnational has 28 outlets around the country.
The top-tier Nigerian bank has operations in seven African
countries and Britain as wells as representative offices in
China, United Arab Emirates, Lebanon and India.
Access Bank plans to expand to Cameroon, Mozambique and
Sierra Leone this year following the acquisition, the bank's
spokesman said.
Patrick Njoroge, the governor of the central bank in Kenya,
said last September that he expected consolidation in the
industry to continue, adding that market-driven tie-ups were
working. Last year's all share acquisition of National Bank of Kenya
by KCB Group KCB.NR last year has been touted as one of the
biggest deals in the Kenyan sector.
Access became Nigeria's biggest lender last year, a status
it achieved after it acquired rival Diamond Bank in a $235
million deal that it said was meant to create Africa's largest
bank by customers. Nigerian lenders have been trying to find new avenues to
grow after slow economic growth at home following a 2016
recession, caused loans to turn sour, leaving banks parking cash
in government bonds whose yields have now declined.