The story
At a 1964 National Federal Chamber of Commerce (NAFCOC) conference a call was made for the creation of a bank for Black South Africans. Sam Mostuenyane, who led NAFCOC at that time, attempted to raise the capital to start the bank but failed. It was only in 1975 when R1 million was raised and met Reserve Bank approval, that it was founded. The original African Bank Limited, was established on 31 July 1975, and was a subsidiary of African Bank Investments Limited, then a bank-controlling company listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. The first branch opened in Ga-Rankuwa near Pretoria.
In 1995, the bank experienced financial difficulties and its controlling stake was purchased for R100 million by Natal Building Society and New African Investments Limited. They restructured the bank from a deposit taker into a lending bank and relisted it on the JSE. In 1998, Theta Investment Group Limited acquired the bank's license. In 1999, Theta changed its name to African Bank Investments Limited (ABIL).
On 10 August 2014, the original African Bank Limited was placed under curatorship by the South African Reserve Bank, under the terms of the South African Banks Act, Act 94 of 1990. Thomas Winterboer was appointed as curator to implement the restructuring proposal and manage the affairs of the bank, subject to the supervision of the Registrar of Banks. It was established that the original bank had poor lending practices that resulted in write-downs of bad loans.
The SARB announced a restructuring proposal, which received support from a consortium of six South African banks and the Public Investment Corporation. A new banking group, African Bank Holdings Limited, was created to assume the viable assets and some of the liabilities of the old bank. The legacy bank and the compromised part of the business was renamed Residual Debt Services Limited (RDS). RDS surrendered its banking license on 4 April 2014.
On 4 April 2016, the new African Bank Limited opened its doors as the new entity, with the required licenses and registrations required by the various regulators in place.
In May 2022, African Bank announced a deal to acquire Grindrod Bank in addition to their holding company Grindrod Financial Holdings. African Bank stated that the acquisition worth R1.5 billion, will aid the introduction of business banking into their services since Grindrod Bank has 26 years of specialisation in the corporate and investment banking sector.
From Wikipedia’s article on African Bank Limited, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4