Al Baraka Banking Group is Gulf’s one of the top based Islamic banks but according to its Pakistani unit, it is soon going to merge with the Burj Bank to have an asset collection of more than $1.1 billion that has been approved by both bank shareholders last month and only needs regulatory approvals now.
The Burj Bank shall have one Al Baraka Bank Pakistan’s share for every 1/7 shares in the Burj according to what the Baraka Group has said while the merger shall be effective from this year’s last quarter as 74 bank branches shall convert to Al Baraka Bank Pakistan and have a total of 224 branches additionally. Thus the Al Baraka Bank will become the major shareholder in the formation while the Burj continues to attract interest from many Pakistani institutions while it has also been short listed three Islamic banks for the merger to conduct due diligence as well.
The largest shareholder in the Burj Bank is now Al Baraka’s Al Khair with 37.9% shares while the Jeddah based Islamic corporation for development of private sector also has 33.9% shares too. The GFH financial Group of Bahrain has also said that it has signed an MoU last month for buying a majority Bank Al Khair stake as well.
