Samba Financial Group SJSC, formerly known as The Saudi American Bank, is a Saudi multinational banking firm based in Saudi Arabia. The combined institution had 66 branches in the Kingdom. Its international operations consist of a branch each in London, Qatar and Dubai, as well as a subsidiary that has 40 branches across major cities in Pakistan. The company dates back to 1955. After a partial nationalization program by the Saudi government, Citibank owned a 40% stake in the company in 1980, but sold its remaining interest in 2004. Samba and NCB planned a mega-merger worth 15.3 billion dollars. The merger would result in creation of Persian Gulf's third largest bank after Qatar National Bank and First Abu Dhabi Bank.
History
Samba, or The Saudi American Bank as it was once known, was established on 12 February 1980 with the takeover of Citibank branches in Jeddah and Riyadh in accordance with a Saudi requirement that forced all foreign banks to be at least 60% owned by Saudi nationals. Citigroup entered a Technical Management Agreement under which it agreed to manage the new bank. The former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Shaukat Aziz, was the Managing Director of the bank in the 1990s. First National City Bank opened its Jeddah branch in 1955, and its Riyadh branch in 1966. Citibank created SAMBA, in which it took a 40% share, to take over its branches in Saudi Arabia, pursuant to a Royal Decree on February 12, 1980. In 1985 SAMBA opened a branch in Istanbul that it closed after 1994, and at one point maintained a subsidiary in Geneva and a representative office in Beirut. In the late 1980s SAMBA opened a branch in London. Speed Cash Services: Samba Financial group is the first in the banking sector to have simplified the process of transferring the money overseas just within hours, Mohd Akhter Alam was the pioneer for these services. In July 1999 SAMBA merged with United Saudi Bank by an exchange of shares, to form one of the largest banks in the Middle East. Before the merger Citibank owned 30 percent of Samba, having sold a 10 percent tranche to two public agencies in 1991. After the merger Citibank was still the largest shareholder with 23 percent of the shares. Kingdom Holding Company also had a large share ownership deriving from his ownership in United Saudi Bank. Samba was always the acronym for the Saudi American Bank but the name was changed to Samba Financial Group permanently in 2003 and all references to Saudi American Bank were removed. This name change followed Citibank's decision to pull out of Saudi Arabia and sell its then 20% stake to the General Organisation for Social Insurance. Officially, this was done due to the anticipated relaxation of laws governing foreign banks' operations in the Kingdom. Some speculate that this was due to rising anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia. This has become more evident after the change of the Saudi British Bank name as well to SABB in 2006. Nevertheless, SABB is still an HSBC partnership and they have changed their artwork and colors from green and white to the HSBC logo. In 2004, Citibank sold its remaining stake in the company. In March 2007, Samba Financial Group acquired 68% of Crescent Commercial Bank Limited in Pakistan. CCBL, established in 2002, was formerly known as Mashreq Bank Pakistan Limited, which in turn was the result of the merger in 2003 of Crescent Investment Bank Limited and the Pakistan branches of Mashreq Bank psc. CCBL is now named Samba Bank. It currently operates 37 branches across Pakistan; the bank hopes to expand its network of branches in 2018. In June 2008, Samba opened the first integrated branch in Dubai. In 2010, Samba opened the first branch in Doha, Qatar. In August 2011, Samba made the list of top ten safest banks 2011 in the Middle East ranked at number four. In 2017, Rania Mahmoud Nashar was named CEO. This makes Samba the first listed Saudi commercial bank to have a female CEO.
