Absa Group's minority shareholders openly supported a plan to purchase the African operations of Barclays Plc. The purchase would amount to US$2.1 billion in new shares would dilute the minority shareholders but in return would provide more visibility to a greater African market.
The plan would be to merge the bulk of their businesses done outside of South Africa. Barclays would divest its control of eight of its operations in Africa for 129.5 million new Absa shares. In turn, the deal would increase the stake of Barclay in Absa, South Africa's third largest bank. The exchange would be a share for cash swap to create more business for the South African bank.
This is a new path forged by Barclays as in previous times, as it had blocked ambitions for Absa to expand its operations for reasons of conflict of interest. Barclays interests would increase from 55.5% to 62.3% while Absa share values increased by 1.1% to SA rand163.90.
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