By Heather McLean, 28 May 2002 14:04
NEWS UK online bank Egg has completed its acquisition of French banking site Zebank, the company set up by entrepreneur Bernard Arnault. The deal closed on a cash price of £3.5m plus a share settlement of £19.3m for the company's previous shareholders, Groupe Arnault and Dexia making a total of £22.8m. The cash price for Zebank's acquisition closed £1.6m lower than the expected price of just over £5m that was announced by Egg at the end of January. Zebank had pro-forma assets worth over £37m as of 31 December 2001. The French online bank has almost 150,000 customer accounts and nearly 90,000 individual customers as of the end of the first quarter ended 31 March, compared to Egg's two million customer accounts. Egg shares were down this morning by 2.25p, or 1.26 per cent, to 176.25p from an opening of 178p. Does Egg have what it takes to stay at the top of the online banking market?
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