Standard Chartered plans to sell its Jordanian business to Arab Jordan Investment Bank (AJIB), the two parties said on Sunday, as Standard Chartered presses ahead with plans to exit seven markets in Africa and the Middle East.
The bank entered into an agreement with AJIB, subject to central bank approval, which will see Standard Chartered's corporate, commercial, and institutional banking, consumer lending, and private banking businesses migrated to AJIB.
Standard Chartered is a British bank operating in more than 50 countries and headquartered in London.
All Standard Chartered Bank employees in Jordan will be transferred to AJIB, it said in a statement.
Standard Chartered's Africa and Middle East CEO Sunil Kaushal said the agreement is aligned with the bank's global strategy "to deliver efficiencies, reduce complexity, as well as redirect resources within the Africa Middle East region to areas with the greatest potential to drive scale, grow and better support clients."
AJIB said the purchase falls within the Jordanian lender's strategy to grow its market share in the country, which continues to grow after it acquired HSBC's banking business in Jordan in 2014 and the National Bank of Kuwait's banking business in Jordan in 2022.
Standard Chartered in April 2022 said it plans to leave seven markets: Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, Jordan, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe.
The bank said at the time it was seeking to exit markets where it is sub-scale and narrow its focus to faster-growing markets in the region, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
Meanwhile, the Amman Stock Exchange bourse closed Sunday’s session at 2577.59 points, a drop of 0.14 percent. Total traded shares reached 3.3 million worth 4.4 million Jordanian dinars due to completing 2,119 deals.
