Nedbank Group has pledged to retain all employees of NCBA Group once its proposed acquisition is finalised, offering assurances that job security formed a central plank of the Kenyan lender’s board decision to back the deal.
In supplementary details accompanying the offer, NCBA disclosed that Nedbank views the bank’s existing workforce as pivotal to its broader regional ambitions, particularly its planned push into East Africa. The South African lender has undertaken to preserve the current contractual and statutory employment rights of NCBA’s management and staff in line with Kenyan law, signalling continuity rather than upheaval.
When Nedbank first unveiled its January 21 bid for a 66 per cent stake in the Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed bank, it remained silent on the potential consequences for employees. Subsequently, NCBA chief executive John Gachora indicated that safeguarding the institution’s brand, personnel and operating model weighed heavily in the board’s endorsement of the transaction.
Regulatory filings show that NCBA employed 3,712 staff as at December 2024, up from 3,462 a year earlier. Historically, banking mergers of comparable magnitude have tended to trigger difficult integration phases, often marked by redundancies, branch rationalisation and system overhauls that unsettle customers. In this instance, the absence of a full-scale Kenyan banking operation by Nedbank, which currently maintains only a representative office in the country, appears to have eased concerns over overlap and duplication.
Under the proposed structure, NCBA will maintain its existing board configuration. Nedbank will nominate at least two directors to the board, while current NCBA shareholders will appoint one representative to sit on Nedbank’s board, creating a measure of cross-shareholding governance.
Nedbank’s proposal emerged from a field of interested foreign suitors. Market chatter had linked Standard Bank, via its Kenyan unit Stanbic Holdings, to a possible approach.
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The offer values NCBA at 13.9 billion rand, roughly Sh109.9 billion. Nedbank intends to acquire 66 per cent of the bank through a combination of share swap and cash. Eighty per cent of the consideration will be settled in Nedbank shares, priced at 250 rand each for the transaction, while the remaining 20 per cent will be paid in cash at Sh2,100 for every 100 NCBA shares. Shareholders will receive 4.02994 Nedbank shares for every 100 NCBA shares tendered. Investors whose holdings do not translate into at least 200 Nedbank shares will instead be compensated entirely in cash.
All NCBA shareholders may tender up to 66 per cent of their holdings on a pro rata basis. As of December 2025, the bank had thousands of retail investors, including nearly 12,000 shareholders holding between one and 500 shares, alongside larger blocks owned by prominent Kenyan families such as the Kenyattas, the Ndegwas and the Nyachaes.
The real test, as ever, will lie not in the promises inked on offer documents but in the lived experience of staff and customers once integration begins. For now, Nedbank is pitching stability, continuity and regional expansion rather than the customary surgical trim that so often accompanies cross-border banking deals.
