Dubai Islamic Bank board approves details of Noor Bank deal

Dubai Islamic Bank to issue new shares to satisfy terms of its Noor Bank acquisition

Dubai Islamic Bank reported a 17 per cent drop in its first-quarter net profit on Thursday. Mona Al Marzooqi / The National
Powered by automated translation

Dubai Islamic Bank's board on Monday approved proposed terms for its previously-announced merger with privately-owned Noor Bank.

Directors approved a share swap that will see it offer one new share in DIB for every 5.49 Noor Bank shares. the company said in a statement to the Dubai Financial Market, where its shares trade. The deal will be satisfied through the issue 651,159,958 new Dubai Islamic Bank shares.

The lender also convened a shareholders' general meeting on  "for the purpose of considering and, if thought fit, passing resolutions in respect of all matters relating to the proposed acquisition of Noor Bank by DIB", the statement said.

Dubai Islamic Bank is the UAE's biggest Islamic lender, with Dh230 billion of assets as of September 30, a 3 per cent year-on-year increase.

The bank reported a 1 per cent year-on-year increase in profits in the three months to September 30 of almost Dh1.25bn, and profit for the nine-month period grew 10 per cent to Dh3.97bn. It first announced proposals to acquire Noor Bank in April this year, and recommended the deal to its shareholders in June.

Noor Bank had assets worth Dh46.5bn as of September 30, an 8 per cent decline since the start of the year, according to its filed accounts. It declared a 12 per cent year-on-year decline in net profit for the three months to September 30 of Dh185.3m

Both banks have a common shareholder in the form of Investment Corporation of Dubai, the sovereign fund that owns a 28.37 per cent share in Dubai Islamic Bank and 23.9 per cent of Noor Islamic Bank, according to its website. The UAE government also owns a 4.42 per cent stake in Noor Bank through the Emirates Investment Authority, Noor Bank's website states.

Last week, Dubai Islamic Bank announced it had closed a five-year, $750 million (Dh2.75bn) sukuk at a profit rate of 2.95 per cent. The sukuk was a drawdown on the bank's $7.5bn Trust Certificate Issuance Programme listed on Nasdaq Dubai and Euronext Dublin, and was 2.7 times oversubscribed.

"The success of DIB's sukuk is a testament to the confidence investors place in the bank's robust fundamentals," group chief executive Adnan Chilwan said.