Merged Kuwaiti-Bahraini bank to have $92 bln in assets: report

The potential tie-up between Kuwait Finance House and Bahrain's Ahli United Bank looks more likely, as the wave of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) among Gulf banks gains pace, S&P Global Market Intelligence said in a note on Wednesday.

In July, the Kuwaiti lender had invited Al Ahli United Bank to sign a memorandum of understanding and a non-disclosure agreement to commence valuations to explore the probability of unifying the businesses and assessing the feasibility of creating a new bank.

If the merger goes ahead, the combined bank will have assets of roughly $91.88 billion, the largest in both Kuwait and Bahrain in that measure, it said.

Individually, the Kuwaiti bank holds $57.98 billion in assets, $31.70 billion in loans, as it reported net income of  $146.3 million in Q1 2018.

Al Ahli United Bank’s assets and loans stood at $33.91 billion and $19.76 billion, respectively, as of Q1 2018. It reported a net income of $174.7 million for the first three months of 2018.

Earlier in May, Saudi British Bank and Alawwal Bank agreed to $5 billion merger deal to create the Kingdom's third-largest lender. In 2017, First Abu Dhabi Bank, the UAE’s largest bank, was created after the merger of National Bank of Abu Dhabi and First Gulf Bank.