Saudi Arabia's NCB gets regulatory nod for capital increase to merge Samba

Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority approved National Commercial Bank's request to increase its capital to merge Samba Financial Group into the bank by issuing shares and transferring all of Samba's assets and liabilities to NCB through a securities exchange offer.

NCB requested to increase its capital to 44.78 billion riyals from 30.00 billion riyals by issuing 1,478,000,000 ordinary shares.

The two lenders received central bank approval for their merger in early February. The merged entity will be named Saudi National Bank.

In October 2020, NCB and Samba entered into a binding merger agreement to form the country's largest bank with assets of 837 billion riyals. The binding agreement comes after both banks signed a framework agreement in June 2020 for a potential merger, with NCB being the merging bank.

As of Feb. 8, US$1 was equivalent to 3.75 Saudi Arabian riyals.