Attijariwafa bank has once again been announced for a stake acquisition in Barclays Egypt. The SNI-controlled group might be collaborating with UBS Group AG for the operation, Bloomberg said citing an anonymous source.

Reuters has previously made the same announcement in March 2016, citing Ismael Douiri, the general manager of the Moroccan bank. Attijariwafa has repeatedly explained its global strategy which aims to limit exposure to the Moroccan market only, so as to bring to 30% at least, the share of its foreign business.

Truly, looking at the bank’s financial performances over the past 10 years one might think it has stopped growing. Net profit has not significantly increased since 2010, when it grew by 20.77%, compared to 2009. These performances though growing, have had their growth rate decreased reaching 3.7% in 2015, in spite of interest charges falling substantially over the year.

Barclays Plc has for some time been seeking to sell its Egyptian subsidiary. The group failed to merge this unit to its largest in Africa, Barclays Africa Group (which it is also selling). Also, discussions with Gulf banks were unfruitful.

Barclays Egypt is presently valued at $500 million. The index will be compared to Attijariwafa’s available treasury which on December 31, 2015, was 3.9 billion dirham (around $402 million). However, given the various commitment that the group made this year, this value should have decreased by now.

Idriss Linge