Less than a month after announcing the deal of their careers in October, executives from Johannesburg-based Standard Bank found themselves back on a convention centre stage justifying why it was such a good idea. Some shareholders had voiced concerns about Industrial and Commercial Bank of China’s plan to buy a 20 per cent stake in Standard Bank in a $5.5bn deal that both banks called a “strategic partnership”.
Would ICBC’s minority stake, shareholders had asked, give it a blocking position or foreshadow a takeover? Was the deal price not too low, others questioned, when the buyer was by some measures the biggest bank in the world?
