By Dipo Olowookere
The major obstacle in the proposed merger between Diamond Bank and Access Bank has already been crossed.
Business Post reliably gathered that shareholders of the two financial institutions on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved the ‘marriage.’
A federal high court sitting in Lagos had directed the boards of the two banks to convey separate meetings to get authorisation of their respective shareholders to go ahead with the merger.
At the Diamond Bank court-ordered meeting held at Grand Banquet Hall, Civic Centre, Lagos this morning, about 99.98 percent of the shareholders present voted to have the bank dissolve into Access Bank Plc.
Business Post learned that while no shareholder voted against the deal, only 0.02 percent of the shareholders remained neutral.
With this approval, shareholders of Diamond Bank Plc are entitled to receive a consideration of N3.13k per share, comprising of N1.00 per share in cash and the allotment of two new Access Bank ordinary shares for every seven Diamond Bank ordinary shares held as at the Implementation Date.
The offer represents a premium of 260 percent to the closing market price of N0.87 per share of Diamond Bank on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) as of December 13, 2018, the date of the final binding offer.
At the Access Bank Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) held this afternoon, shareholders also overwhelmingly voted for the acquisition of Diamond Bank.
A breakdown of the voting today showed that 97.89 percent of the shareholders voted for the merger, 2.10 percent voted against the deal, while the remaining 0.01 percent abstained.
