ABSA Bank is one of the big five banks in South Africa (the other four are Capitec, Standard Bank, FNB and Nedbank), providing a variety of banking and financial services. ABSA stands for "Amalgamated Banks of South Africa", and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the ABSA Group Limited.
ABSA itself is not listed, but its majority owner, Barclays Africa is publicly listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, the majority owner is Barclays Bank PLC:
At 31 Dec 2016 25% of Barclays Africa's shareholders were based in Africa. 54% in the UK and 12% in North America.
Barclays Bank is domiciled and incorporated in the United Kingdom. Barclays' address registered office is at 1 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, UK.
ABSA Financial Services Limited is a 100% owned subsidiary of ABSA Group Limited, which owns Absa Life Limited and Absa Insurance Company Limited. ABSA Group Limited also owns 80% of Banco Austral, Sarl (Mozambique), 55% of the National Bank of Commerce Limited (Tanzania) and 55% of Banco Commercial Angolano (Angola).
W Somerville
3rd Floor, Absa Towers East
170 Main Street
Johannesburg
Gauteng Province
2001
South Africa
williams@absa.co.za
Absa Bank generally revises its charges once a year in January.
31 Jul 2008
Absa announces that it has 1 million customers transacting online.
24 Jul 2008
A prepaid debit card is launched. Money can be placed on the card via cash at an ATM or ABSA branch, or internet or cellphone banking. The card can be used at any ATM or shop displaying the VISA Electron sign.
9 Jun 2008
ABSA's Christo Vrey indicates that ABSA has half a million cellphone banking clients.
28 May 2008
ABSA starts offering 10 year fixed bonds to its home loan clients.
May 2008
ABSA and FNB reduce their maximum home loans to 100% of the value of the loan (from 108%).
20 May 2008
Having completed a pilot study, ABSA and 1time airline decide to roll out a plan to providing banking services (except withdrawals and deposits) in the air. 1time provides 2 seats on the plane for banking, and ABSA equipts the banker with a laptop and digital camera. On landing the laptop is synchronised with ABSA's mainframe.
8 May 2008
ABSA sets up a Facebook profile.
May 2008
ABSA Bank launches Absa International Mortgages, which assists South Africans in financing international property purchases by providing access to Barclays International Mortgage Services.
2 May 2008
ABSA Bank gets a provisional licence from the Bank of Namibia to operate a commercial bank in Namibia (there are currently 4 banks licenced in Namibia - Bank Windhoek, First National Bank of Namibia, Nedbank Namibia and Standard Bank Namibia).
25 Apr 2008
Fitch downgrades Barclays' rating to AA. At the same time Fitch downgraded Absa Group Limited and Absa Bank Limited's rating. Barclays' capitalisation is weaker than many of its competitors.
18 Apr 2008
ABSA purchases a 50% + 1 share stake in Woolworths Financial Services (which runs Woolworths' credit card and in-store accounts) for R875m cash. Woolworths has some 1.6 million in-store accounts and 169,000 visa credit cards. The Woolworths credit cards will be migrated from Mercantile to ABSA. South Africa's Woolworths is unrelated to the London-based Woolworths Group Plc.
10 Apr 2008
The South African Reserve Bank increases its repo rate by 0.5% to 11.5%, and ABSA increases its prime lending rate to 15%.
9 Apr 2008
At a dinner at Moyo on Spier Wine Estate to end the Cape Epic, ABSA donates R50,000 to the songo.info bmx project.
7 Apr 2008
To assist their clients with safe online banking, ABSA is offering PC-Cillin security software to them for free.
26 Mar 2008
1am to 2am
An ABSA ATM in the Bergsig supermarket in Johannesburg is bombed (nobody is injured and no money is taken).
Mar 2008
ABSA appoints Happy Ntshingila as director in charge of communications and marketing, reporting to report to the chief executive of Absa Retail Bank, Louis von Zeuner. Born on the 12th December 1960, Ntshingila obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree at Fort Hare, before working for Tiger Oats (manager of public relations), Unilever, Vodacom, IBM (editor), Ogilvy & Mather and and co-founded HerdBuoys Advertising and Marketing.
20 Mar 2008
Meeg Bank's chairperson (Professor Wiseman Nkuhlu) announces that it is to be acquired by ABSA Bank. Meeg Bank is South Africa's only remaining black-owned bank. Under the terms of the deal ABSA increases its holding in Meeg Bank Limited from 49.7% to 74.5% at a cost of R53m for the additional shares. Meeg Bank’s reserve capital stood at some 11% – a single percent above the statutory requirement. ABSA has agreed to offer a 20% premium to the audited value of Meeg's shares at 31 March 2008, for the remainder of Meeg Bank bank. Meeg Bank was established in 1998 from the assets of the now closed Bank of Transkei, and is based in Umtata in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa.
19 Mar 2008
ABSA is implementing anti-skimming technology on its Self Service Kiosks and fully branded Absa ATMs. The "Jitter" software vibrates the card reader which sends a disrupted signal to illegal skimming devices. The Jitter software will result in the speed at which the bank card are sucked into and ejected from ATMs is a little slower than what is currently the case.
23 Apr 2007
ABSA Group Limited's agm is held in Johannesburg, at the PW Sceales auditorium in the ABSA Towers.
May 2006
ABSA Capital is launched, a combination of Absa Corporate and Merchant Bank and Barclays Capital.
8 Nov 2006
ABSA sells its 34.4% stake in Capricorn Investment Holdings Limited (which owns inter alia Bank Windhoek).
1 Jan 2006
ABSA purchases the South African holdings of Barclays Bank, as part of the strategy that ABSA should take over all the southern african holdings of Barclays.
19 Aug 2005
KPMG resign as joint auditors of ABSA, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (who are auditors to Barclays) are appointed as joint auditors of ABSA.
19 Aug 2005
A resolution is passed to change ABSA's year-end from 31 March to 31 December with effect from 31 December 2005, to bring it in line with its new parent-company - Barclays PLC.
27 Jul 2005
In the largest ever foreign direct investment into South Africa, Barclays Bank PLC acquires a 56.4% stake in the ABSA Group for £2.6bn.
9 May 2005
Barclays announces its offer to purchase a stake of up to 60% in the ABSA Group, at R82,50 per share.
25 Apr 2005
A 50% stake in in Banco Comercial Angolano is acquired.
Feb 2005
The Credit Committee: Large Exposures becomes operations.
Jan 2005
The holding in Sineus Holdings AG is increased to 99.9%.
Sep 2004
An additional 30% of Abvest Holdings (Proprietary) Limited is acquired.
1 Jul 2004
Pursuant to the black economic empowerment and employee transactions to introduce empowerment shareholders in the ABSA Group, 79 237 500 redeemable cumulative option-holding preference shares are issued; 6 085 200 are issued to the Absa Group Limited Employee Share Ownership Programme (Absa ESOP) Trust and 73 152 300 are issued to Batho Bonke Capital (Proprietary) Limited.
1 Jul 2004
Sixty one percent of Sineus Holdings AG is acquired.
1 Jul 2004
ABSA purchases all the shares of Avena LeasePlan (Proprietary) Limited,
with effect from 1 May 2004.
Jun 2004
A BEE transaction is concluded.
Oct 2002
The Deloitte & Touche Human Capital Corporation names ABSA the "best company to work for".
Jan 2002
Banco Austral Mozambique is acquired.
1 Apr 2000
A 51% stake in Unifer is acquired.
1998
Allied Bank, United Bank and Volkskas Bank stop trading under their own names, from this point they all trade under the name "ABSA".
1997
The name of the holding company is changed from "Amalgamated Banks of South Africa Limited" to "Absa Group Limited".
31 Mar 1997
Members joining the ABSA retirement fund on or after 1 April 1997 are entitled to benefits under the defined contribution structure (all members had the option on 31 Mar 1997 to convert to the defined contribution structure, of which the majority did - the reminder are on the defined benefit structure).
1 Apr 1996
ABSA Employees retiring after this date are not eligible for post-retirement medical benefits from the ABSA Group Pension Fund. The post-retirement medical benefit liability of pensioners who retired before 1 April 1996 is funded in the Absa Group Pension Fund.
1992
Bankorp is acquired (which includes Bankfin, Senbank and Trustbank).
1991
Allied Bank, United Bank, Volkskas Bank and parts of the Sage Group merge to formAmalgamated Banks of South Africa.
1975
Danie C Cronje joins Volkskas.
Annual report to 31 Dec 2013 (note that the listed entity was renamed from ABSA to Barclays Africa on 2 Aug 2013)
