OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Thursday 1.20pm.
NECOR has won the bid to acquire control of the embattled FBC Fidelity Bank, which was placed under curatorship last year after liquidity problems.
The bank aims to merge FBC with its own Peoples Bank to form the country’s biggest empowerment bank.
FBC’s curator, Tim Store, announced on Thursday that its shareholders have agreed to support the scheme of arrangement offered by Nedcor.
The offer guarantees full repayment to the depositors of FBC Fidelity. “The thousands of people who deposited their savings with FBC Fidelity will have the option to be repaid in full and will receive interest on their money,” says Nedcor’s chief executive Richard Laubscher.
For the past eight months Nedcor has been evaluating empowerment opportunities, and more recently has been in discussion with various empowerment groups with a view to buying shares in Peoples Bank.
It said its due diligence investigation revealed that FBC Fidelity, excluding asset write-downs, is trading profitably and is likely to continue to do so.
The board of directors and management will include prominent South Africans from the previously disadvantaged communities and the shareholder participation could represent a substantial number of trade union members, a statement said.
The merged bank will initially, and prior to any repositioning, have assets of R8-billion and close to one million clients. It will be the eighth largest bank in South Africa.