KARACHI: United Bank Limited (UBL) Pakistan has concluded the sale of Assets and Liabilities of UBL Tanzania (UBLT) to Exim Bank Tanzania Limited, a company notice sent to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX) said on Monday.
UBLT is a wholly owned subsidiary of UBL Pakistan. The notice further said that the banking license awarded by the Central Bank of Tanzania has been surrendered and orderly liquidation of UBLT is in process.
The decision is part of UBL’s strategy for global repositioning and realignment based on purely commercial considerations, read the notice.
When the large local banks should be looking to fight and expand globally, they are instead surrendering their international licenses to focus on the local market only. No wonder that the global products and expertise is fast disappearing from the local market, as more and more international branches are closed off by the HBLs and UBLs. Getting an international license has become a major challenge these days and the days when HBL and UBL can go and start operations in any country they wanted to, are long gone. There is a severe long term cost to the economy associated with these decisions as as such govt of Pakistan should also look into these commercial business decisions.
Well it depends if they could make more profit in their local, under-served market, then it makes more sense to consolidate rather than plant flags everywhere.