Standard Chartered Completes Departure from Jordan by Selling Company

As part of its intention to withdraw from seven countries in Africa and the Middle East, Standard Chartered has agreed to sell its Jordanian operations to Arab Jordan Investment Bank (AJIB).

Standard Chartered’s corporate, commercial, and institutional banking, consumer lending, and private banking divisions will be transferred to AJIB after the two banks get clearance from the central bank.

According to a statement sent via email to Reuters, all Standard Chartered Bank staff in Jordan would be moved to AJIB.

Sunil Kaushal, CEO of Standard Chartered in Africa and the Middle East, said the agreement is consistent with the bank’s global strategy to “deliver efficiencies, reduce complexity, and to redirect resources within the Africa Middle East region to areas with the greatest potential to drive scale, grow, and better support clients.”

The transaction, according to AJIB, is in line with the Jordanian lender’s plan to increase its market share in the nation, which has continued to increase since it bought the banking operations of HSBC in Jordan in 2014 and the National Bank of Kuwait in Jordan in 2022.

In April 2022, Standard Chartered announced its intention to withdraw from seven markets: Angola, Cameroon, Gambia, Jordan, Lebanon, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe.

The bank said at the time that it aimed to withdraw from regions where it operated on a small scale and concentrate its efforts on the region’s faster-growing markets, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

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