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NCBA shares hit all-time high on Standard Bank buyout offer
NCBA Group Managing Director and CEO John Gachora during a media briefing to announce their half year financial result release at Radison Blu Hotel in Nairobi on August 24, 2023.
Shares of NCBA Group hit an all-time high of Sh75.25 on Tuesday on news of its potential acquisition by Africa’s largest lender, Standard Bank Group, in a deal that could dramatically alter the structure and ownership of Kenya’s banking sector.
The lender’s share gained 8.27 percent from Sh69.50, closing the day as the second top gainer at the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE), as investors factored in the potential deal.
The surge in shares followed reports in Bloomberg News that Standard Bank Group has directed its Kenyan unit, Stanbic Holdings, to engage NCBA in buyout talks, intending to conclude the deal in months.
The combined entity will have assets of approximately Sh1.1 trillion, according to their latest filings, which would make it the largest after Equity Group Holdings Plc and KCB Group Plc.
NCBA is currently valued at about Sh125 billion and its shares have surged 70.6 percent in the past year.
Stanbic’s shares gained 0.25 percent to Sh199, increasing gains in the past year to 63.1 percent. Stanbic Holdings failed to deny or confirm the talks with NCBA.
“Standard Bank does not comment on market speculation. Any developments regarding future growth opportunities will always be communicated through the appropriate channels, in accordance with our regulatory obligations and stock exchange listing requirements,” said the bank in an emailed response.
The multi-billion shilling deal would involve powerful and rich families. The family of former Central Bank Governor, Philip Ndegwa, owns a 14.94 percent stake in NCBA worth Sh19.3 billion, while the family of founding president Jomo Kenyatta hold 13.2 percent valued at Sh17 billion.
It is understood that talks are ongoing and there is no guarantee that a deal will be finalized. Plans are to try and conclude a transaction in the coming months, said the people quoted in Bloomberg.
A successful buyout would see the transfer of a prominent local institution into foreign hands, with the merged entity leapfrogging Co-operative Bank of Kenya into the third-largest bank by assets.
It would mark the return of a powerful foreign-owned player to the top three league of the country’s banking hierarchy — a space that has for the past decade been dominated by homegrown banks.
For years, Kenya’s biggest banks have told the story of homegrown giants rising to dominate a sector once ruled by multinationals.
KCB Group, Equity Group and Co-operative Bank of Kenya have grown over the years to upend a market previously dominated by foreign-owned lenders— Barclays Bank of Kenya (now Absa Kenya) and Standard Chartered Bank.
In 2000, Barclays Bank (now Absa) led the Kenyan market with a 19.85 percent share, followed by KCB at 12.42 percent and Standard Chartered at 8.74 percent.
This landscape has since shifted dramatically. By the end of last year, local banks occupied the top four positions, led by KCB (16.6 percent), Equity (12.8 percent), Co-op (9.6 percent and NCBA (8.3 percent).
Absa is now placed fifth with a market share of 6.6 percent and StanChart is eighth with 5.4 percent.
Stanbic could be seeing the NCBA purchase as an easier path to rise to the top of Kenya’s banking sector and challenge the Equity-KCB dominance.
It would also be buying into a lender with a consistent dividend payout, having paid shareholders Sh9.06 billion last year and Sh31.2 billion in the past five years.
Kenya is home to 38 commercial banks and authorities have been urging consolidation to form more resilient lenders with deeper pockets to cater to a rapidly expanding region with a young and growing population.
Stanbic had 310,000 customers and 30 branches at the end of June 2025, compared with NCBA, which had 121 branches serving 415,000 customers in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania and Rwanda.
NCBA Group is a product of the 2019 merger between Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) and NIC to achieve scale and strength.
CBA brought digital strength and retail reach through platforms like M-Shwari, while NIC had strengths in corporate banking and asset finance expertise.
M-Shwari is also another attraction to Standard Bank, which owns a 75 percent stake in Stanbic, given its ability to serve the underdeveloped market and people, especially in rural areas who still keep their cash under mattresses at home.
The deal aligns with Standard Bank’s strategy to be a top-three player in its African markets, with a current focus on East Africa, given growth opportunities. Standard Bank is the continent’s biggest bank by assets of $166 billion in December or Sh21.4 trillion.
This indicates that its assets are larger than Kenya’s estimated GDP of Sh16.1 trillion, and it is nearly three times the size of Kenya’s banking sector at Sh7.5 trillion.
This is a pointer that the lender would not have a problem financing the NCBA buyout.
