The Commonwealth Development Corporation (CDC), a British institution has indicated that it will sell its stake in Uganda's DFCU bank "very soon."
CDC is one of DFCU’s oldest shareholders having teamed up with government in 1964 to start the bank.
On June 14, CDC notified the DFCU Board and other shareholders that they would sell their stake.
CDC’s Investment Director Irina Grigorenko, said according to foreign press reports that the firm was undertaking "a review of its investment in DFCU Limited which may lead to the disposal or some of some or all of its shares in DFCU over the short to medium term.”
Some industrial analysts have said that the exit of CDC could be related to DFCU's controversial acquisition of Crane Bank Ltd in January last year.
It is said that after some Crane Bank shareholders pointed out the loopholes in the agreement and threatened to take DFCU to court, CDC became unsettled.
"They opted out because they did not want to be legally liable if they lost the case," said one analysts who preferred to remain anonymous.
Apart from the CDC, other shareholders of DFCU are: Rabo Development from the Netherlands and NorFinance from Norway, who are shareholders in Arise B.V together with Norfund, a Norwegian government-owned Private Equity firm and FMO, the Dutch Development Bank.
Dfcu Shareholding percentages:
- Arise BV 58.71%
- CDC Group of the United Kingdom 9.97%
- National Social Security Fund (Uganda) 7.69%
- Kimberlite Frontier Africa Naster Fund 6.15%
- 2 undisclosed Institutional Investors 3.22%
- SSB-Conrad N. Hilton Foundation 0.98%
- Vanderbilt University 0.87%
- Blakeney Management 0.63%
- Bank of Uganda Staff Retirement Benefits Scheme 0.59%
- Retail investors 11.19%
