Disbank’s majority shareholders the Dogan Group, made up of the Dogan family and two funds, signed the agreement which will see Fortis acquire 89.3% of the Turkish bank’s outstanding shares. The purchase price represents a 20% premium on Disbank’s stock price at the time. Fortis said it will also make a public bid for the remaining 10.7% of the bank’s stock.
Disbank is the seventh largest privately owned bank in Turkey in terms of assets and is listed on the Istanbul stock exchange. It has more than one million customers including around 120,000 small enterprise customers and around 10,000 commercial banking clients.
Of late Disbank has built on its successful commercial banking base to add retail and merchant banking services to its portfolio. The financial organization currently has a network of 173 branches, of which six are strategically located business centers, which it describes as being located in the most dynamic regions of the country.
Jean-Paul Votron, Fortis CEO, commented: This acquisition is fully in line with our strategy to develop our activities outside the Benelux. The combination of Disbank’s network and market knowledge with Fortis’ strength and expertise in cross-selling, multi-channel distribution and risk management will help Disbank to achieve profitable organic growth and to realize its objective to become one of Turkey’s leading banks.
This acquisition is also in line with Fortis’ financial objective to achieve a double digit return on investment as of 2008 onwards. In the undetermined future Disbank will be rebranded to operate under the Fortis name.
