French banking giant BNP Paribas has completed the acquisition of RCS, the private label retail-card joint venture of The Foschini Group (TFG) and Standard Bank.
RCS has more than one million cardholders and serves a network of more than 18,000 retail outlets in South Africa. TFG, which established RCS in 1999, offloaded 45% stake to Standard Bank in 2006.
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TFG will pocket approximately ZAR1.45bn ($135bn) for its 55% stake, while Standard Bank will receive the balance for its 45% stake, reports bdlive.co.za.
RCS, which has a total loan book of nearly ZAR5 billion, is expected to be part of BNP Paribas Personal Finance.
"RCS is only marginally exposed to personal loans as 75% of its turnover is driven by credit cards, which appeal to upper customer segments," BNP Paribas was quoted by bdlive.co.za as saying.
TFG CEO Doug Murray said: "RCS started to cloud what our balance sheet looked like. It sucks a lot of capital. People were starting to think we were a financial institution and not a retailer.
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By GlobalData"We saw the opportunity to start it because we have expertise in lending and it has proved to be a success, but at the end of the day that business has to grow. It was noncore to us and at some stage we had to move it on," Murray added.
