Omnibank, Sahel Sahara to spend GH¢1.2m on merger

• Posted on September 18, 2018
• by Ellsamwise King
• Comment

It will cost about one million cedis to complete the merger between Omnibank and Sahel Sahara bank.

This is the information available from the management of the two banks.

The disclosure comes on the back of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the two banks.

The merger process involves the selection of a transaction advisor, the legal team as well as auditors to assess the books of both banks.

The Deputy Managing Director of Sahel Sahara bank, Dr Kojo Aboagye-Debrah outlined a breakdown of the total cost of the proposed merger.

“For the Transaction advisor, it is roughly close to about 80,000 dollars and the auditors who will undertake due diligence should cost us about 60,000 cedis. Again, we could talk about the legal fee which is also estimated at 30,000 dollars. So in all, we are looking at about 250,000 dollars to be shared by the two banks,” he explained.

The processes culminating into the new entity; OmniBSIC bank, is expected to be completed by October 2018.

Already, the two shareholders have agreed to inject some 80 million cedis to shore up the minimum capital levels.

The Managing Director of OmniBank, Philip Oti-Mensah further highlighted the mechanism the banks are adopting in meeting the new minimum capital.

“So we have a two-step approach; the first is for existing shareholders to bring whatever they have and as I speak now, these existing shareholders have brought in about80 million cedis and we are now going to the second step where we are talking to some two investors of whom we have gone very far…We are expecting that by the end of October, we should close the transactions,” he said.

The success of the Omnibank and Sahel Sahara bank merger should qualify as the first voluntary merger since the Bank of Ghana announced the new minimum capital for banks.