Canadian company MFC Industrial Ltd. has acquired Bawag Malta Bank with an investment of €91,000,000. The bank, which will be known as MFC Merchant Bank Ltd, was previously owned by Bawag P.S.K. in Austria and has been fully-licensed to operate in Malta since 2003.
Chief Executive Officer of the MFC Group, Gerardo Cortina, said that Malta has a very positive business climate and “its economic performance has been one of the best in the European Union” speaking of Malta’s long tradition of merchant banking and trading. “Malta also offers an investor-friendly regulatory environment and certainty in doing business.”
Chief Executive Officer of Bawag Malta Bank, Otto Karasek, expressed that he is “very proud that we could get the MFC Group to Malta.” Saying also that “MFC supports a sustainable, long-term growth approach and [he is] looking forward to being able to realize the potential of integrating their supply chain finance business with our banking operations.”
Minister for Finance, Prof Edward Scicluna welcomed the MFC Merchant Bank Ltd. as “the latest development in the Maltese banking sector.” The minister also spoke of extending accessibility of the Maltese banking sector to foreign markets like the Chinese market. The whole point of these investments, according to the Minister, is to avoid banks being “cannibalized” by stakeholders in the case of crises.
The minister spoke of Malta “placing among the top 20 financial services jurisdictions [which] has been confirmed by the World Economic Forum in its annual Global Competitiveness Report for 2015 – 2016, with the island maintaining its position amongst the best ranked countries in terms of the soundness of its banks and the strength of auditing and reporting standards.” Malta has been referred to as “resilient” in terms of how the banking sector handled the financial crises the EU was faced with in the last years.
MFC is a finance and supply chain group, which provides supply chain services to industrial companies around the world. Their main objective is to offer their services worldwide, especially in the EU where it has about 70% of all its business. With this new investment, MFC will be able to offer a range of regulated structured finance solutions, including factoring, forfeiting, inventory finance, trade finance, bank guarantees and other services to its international finance and supply chain customers and suppliers.
The bank will retain its current eight staff members and will continue to operate at the Plaza Commercial Centre in Sliema. The bank is currently actively hiring local Maltese professionals with experience in trade and structured finance, potentially also training and hiring additional personnel within Malta in the future.