Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed has ac­quired 68,854,703 shares in HFC Bank Ghana, mov­ing its share­hold­ing to 32.02 per cent and mak­ing it the sin­gle largest share­hold­er in that bank. Re­pub­lic Bank pre­vi­ous­ly held an 8.79 per cent share­hold­ing in the Ghana­ian bank, which it ac­quired last De­cem­ber. In an of­fi­cial an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, the bank said the share pur­chase was made on Fri­day on the Ghana Stock Ex­change, with ap­proval from the Cen­tral Bank of Ghana. The shares were pre­vi­ous­ly held by Au­re­os Africa Fund LLC.Speak­ing on the share ac­qui­si­tion, Re­pub­lic Bank's Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor, David Du­lal-White­way con­firmed that the bank had made an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Ghana Se­cu­ri­ties and Ex­change Com­mis­sion, for an ex­emp­tion from the re­quire­ment to make a manda­to­ry takeover of­fer for the re­main­ing shares in HFC Bank. He said should the waiv­er not be grant­ed by the Ghana SEC, Re­pub­lic Bank would, sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry ap­provals, be oblig­ed to make a manda­to­ry of­fer to all share­hold­ers of HFC Bank Ghana to pur­chase their shares, in keep­ing with the Code on Takeovers and Merg­ers.

Du­lal-White­way said Re­pub­lic Bank is ex­cit­ed about the op­por­tu­ni­ties this in­vest­ment in HFC Bank Ghana would bring to its clients in the Caribbean, who are de­sirous of do­ing busi­ness on the African con­ti­nent. He was equal­ly ex­cit­ed, he said, at the val­ue that Re­pub­lic Bank would add to the op­er­a­tions at HFC Bank, and said Re­pub­lic would soon be work­ing close­ly with HFC's ex­ec­u­tive man­age­ment team on par­tic­u­lar busi­ness growth ar­eas al­ready iden­ti­fied.Robert Le Hunte, Gen­er­al Man­ag­er, Cor­po­rate and In­vest­ment Bank­ing at Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed, has been ap­point­ed to the HFC Bank Board of Di­rec­tors.

Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed is an in­de­pen­dent Caribbean bank with a his­to­ry that spans 176 years of ser­vice. It has its roots in the Colo­nial Bank which start­ed busi­ness in T&T in 1837, lat­er be­com­ing Bar­clays Bank T&T Lim­it­ed and even­tu­al­ly Re­pub­lic Bank Lim­it­ed. Re­pub­lic Bank has a cur­rent as­set base of US$8.6bil­lion (TT$51.6 bil­lion) and prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion of US$88.09 mil­lion (TT$1.2 bil­lion).HFC Bank was li­censed as a com­mer­cial bank in 2003, and op­er­ates 26 branch­es through­out Ghana, pro­vid­ing a wide range of bank­ing ser­vices, in­clud­ing mort­gages and re­al es­tate ser­vices, com­mer­cial bank­ing, in­vest­ment bank­ing, mi­cro­fi­nance, pri­vate eq­ui­ty and ven­ture cap­i­tal fund man­age­ment. It was in­stru­men­tal in the de­vel­op­ment of the mort­gage in­dus­try in Ghana and con­tin­ues to be the lead­ing home loan provider in that coun­try, com­mand­ing 30 per cent of the mar­ket. HFC Bank has an as­set base of US$301 mil­lion and prof­it af­ter tax­a­tion of US$7.7 mil­lion based on its last pub­lished fi­nan­cials.