Regulatory conditions block Access Bank’s Bidvest Bank acquisition

Access Bank’s long-anticipated acquisition of South Africa’s Bidvest Bank has collapsed, ending one of the most closely watched cross-border banking deals between West and Southern Africa. The transaction was terminated after Nigeria’s biggest bank by assets failed to meet key regulatory conditions by the agreed deadline date of January 26, 2026. 

In a filing to the Nigerian Exchange on Tuesday, Access Holdings Plc, its parent company, confirmed that the deal fell through because “certain conditions (including regulatory conditions) were not fully met.”

“The outcome reflects the complexities and extended timelines associated with multijurisdictional regulatory and transactional processes, rather than any change in the Bank’s strategic intent or assessment of the South African market,” the company said in its filing.

The collapse of the proposed acquisition has dealt a blow to the Nigerian lender’s rapid pan-African expansion strategy, which has relied heavily on acquisitions to enter tightly regulated markets. 

The sale, first announced in December 2024, was meant to see Access Bank acquire 100% of Bidvest Bank. Access Bank, Africa’s largest lender by customer base following its 2019 merger with Diamond Bank, now serves more than 60 million customers. While the value of the deal was not disclosed, the transaction would have marked a major cross-border expansion into South Africa’s retail and corporate banking sector.

For Bidvest Group, the sale was part of a broader restructuring of its financial services portfolio, aimed at sharpening focus on its core industrial and services businesses.

In a voluntary announcement on Monday, Bidvest Group did not clearly state the certain conditions that Access Bank was supposed to fulfill to meet the conditions on time. 

“The parties have been actively working together to secure approvals. It is, however, unfortunate that certain conditions were not fulfilled by Access Bank plc by the contractually agreed long stop date, resulting in the termination of the transaction,” it wrote.

While neither filing specifies which approvals failed to materialise, cross-border bank acquisitions typically require consent from multiple regulators, including central banks, prudential authorities, and competition regulators in both jurisdictions. South Africa’s banking regulator is widely regarded as one of the most conservative on the continent, particularly when foreign-owned banks are involved.

Despite the setback, Bidvest Group said it has restarted the disposal process, highlighting that the financial services restructuring remains “a strategic imperative.”

“Bidvest has now relaunched the disposal process. We remain confident in our ability to successfully execute this disposal and will endeavor to accelerate transaction timeframes,” the company said.