BancABC to list

BancABC Botswana Managing Director Kgotso Bannalotlhe his bank’s decision to list on the Botswana Stock Exchange Limited (BSEL) is in line with its strategic focus of consolidating its market position.

He said in a media briefing this week that they invited selected investors to purchase up to 180 525 000 ordinary shares at a cost price of P2 per share.

With the listing on BSEL, Banc ABC looks forward to attaining greater access to efficient capital markets in raising locals to support future growth plans and serve as an opportunity for the Selling Shareholders to monetise part of its sharing holding in the company.

“As the date of our pre-listing statement, the Bookrunner has received Irrevocable Undertakings from institutional investors to purchase up to 138 615 547 offered shares, and firm commitments from institutional investors to purchase up to 10 000 000 shares. These combined commitments represent 82.3% of the offer, subject to the Broker Placing and final allocations of the Offer Shares,’’ revealed the CEO.

Bannalotlhe said listing on BSE is meant to put the bank in a position to attract important stakeholders in Botswana into the shareholding of the company which will serve the long-term interest of the ABCH Group, thus enabling the company to attain greater access to efficient capital markets in raising local funding to support the growth plans.

He said as far as the banking profitability and ranking is concerned in Botswana, Banc ABC is currently the 4^th most profitable commercial bank and 5^th largest by assets, with a long track record of operating and innovating in the Botswana financial services sector. The bank will officially begin trading on the BSE on December 10, 2018.

Bannalotlhe said the bank has been keen on coming with innovative means of enhancing efficient banking to its clients, hence a portion of the approximately P360 m proceeds from listing on the BSEL will be used to develop and enhance the ABCH Group’s IT Infrastructure and banking platforms.

He said some of the bank’s innovative and technology centred initiatives include migrating onto a common mobile and internet banking platform and the implementation of a centralised Point of Sale (POS) processing platform.

He said the bank has engaged in several efficient partnerships with the government and other important stakeholders in the banking and financial sector, noting that such outcome of the partnership is the launch of Pula Card with the government recently.

Moreover, Bannalotlhe said BancABC also has good partnership in empowering the SMMEs through its financing project, with the bank boosting of over 5,000 active SMMEs clients.