|By Arabian Post Staff| Emaar Chairman and leading Dubai businessman Mohammed Alabbar’s investment consortium Adeptio is learnt to have secured commitments worth $1.5 billion to fund its pursuit of regional KFC operator Americana.
The banks lending money for the acquisition reportedly include Citigroup, Standard Chartered , Credit Suisse Group AG, National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Emirates NBD, First Gulf Bank and Bahrain-based Ahli United Bank.
Earlier this year, Adeptio had announced the conclusion of an initial deal to buy a 69 percent stake in Americana from Al Khair National, owned by the Al Kharafi family. Apart from KFC, Americana is also the franchise operator of TGI Friday and Pizza Hut.
For the past two years, the owners have been scouting for a buyer for the Americana group set up in 1964. The prospective buyers were said to include Saudi’s Kingdom Holdings Company, Singapore’s Temasek Holdings and Saudi’s Savola Group. Alabbar’s Adeptio was a later entrant.
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