BAHRAIN, 24 March 2006 — The annual ordinary general meeting of Al Baraka Banking Group (ABG), held in Manama earlier this week, approved the final accounts of the group for 2005 as well as the distribution of cash dividends of $17 million to the shareholders and issuance of $122 million new shares. The meeting was followed by an extraordinary general meeting to approve the amendments to the Memorandum and Articles of Association of ABG related to increasing the capital by the amount of the newly issued shares that were distributed to existing shareholders.
ABG Chairman Saleh Abdullah Kamel said the general meeting’s approval of the recommendation to distribute cash dividends and issue new shares follows from the “excellent results achieved and reflects the confidence of the shareholders in the future of the group,” especially that it is about to launch the initial public offering (IPO), which will open new horizons for consolidating the group’s resources, growing its business and expanding its geographical presence in new promising markets.
The financial results of the group for 2005 show its net income jumped by 49.19 percent, up from $211.85 million to $316.07 million, reflecting a growth in all of its financing and investment businesses. Such results, also, come as a result of a number of measures that the group took during 2005 to enhance its financial resources and improve the operating environment, in addition to unifying and improving the coordination between the businesses of the subsidiaries within a unified strategy. The net income, after the deduction of all expenses and minority interest share of profits, reached $79.37, an increase of 115.4 percent over the net income of $36.85 million in 2004. The total assets of the group achieved a growth of 24.1 percent on 2004 figures to reach $6.267 billion, while total deposits increased by 22.1 percent to reach $5.180 billion and shareholders equity by 34.2 percent to amount to $566 million. This increase in main financing sources matches the growth in assets, especially the financing and investment portfolios. As a result, the return on average shareholders equity and on average assets increased from 9.27 percent and 0.80 percent respectively in 2004 to 16.06 percent and 1.40 percent in 2005.
“We look to the future of the group with total confidence, because of the unique points of strength it possesses including the long history of the group and its subsidiaries, wide geographical presence of such banks in major Arab and Islamic countries, in-depth knowledge of the markets in which we operate - all of which enables us to provide products and services that meet the personal and development needs of individuals and economic sectors in such countries,” Saleh Kamel added.
Adnan Ahmed Yousif, the group’s board director and CEO of Albaraka Banking Group, said that the group’s IPO was expected to be initiated during the third week of April. The IPO is expected to result in a substantial increase in the group’s shareholders’ equity from about $566 million, at the present time, to about $1 billion. This will make it one of the biggest Islamic banking institutions in the Arab and Islamic worlds.
