Coris Holding Tightens Its Grip on Cape Verde’s Biggest Bank
CAPE VERDE · BUSINESS
Key Facts
—The deal: Coris Holding has raised its stake in Banco Comercial do Atlântico, Cape Verde’s biggest bank, to 62.25%.
—The seller: Coris bought its first 59.81% in January 2026 from Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Portugal’s state-owned bank.
—The mechanism: A mandatory buyout offer to minority holders ran from 21 May to 4 June 2026, lifting the stake to 62.25%.
—The buyer: Coris, founded by Burkinabè billionaire Idrissa Nassa, holds more than $9 billion in assets across 11 countries.
—The playbook: Coris grows by absorbing the African units that Western banks are leaving behind.
—The signal: Cape Verde is Coris’s first Atlantic-island market, prized for its deep ties to Europe.
Coris Holding now controls Cape Verde’s biggest bank outright, after lifting its stake in Banco Comercial do Atlântico to 62.25%. The West African group, built by Burkinabè billionaire Idrissa Nassa, has bought out a former Portuguese state lender, in a quietly telling piece of South-South finance.
What Coris Holding actually bought
Banco Comercial do Atlântico, known as BCA, is the largest bank in Cape Verde. Coris took its first 59.81% in January 2026, buying the block from Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Portugal’s state-owned lender.
Under Cape Verde’s rules, any new controlling shareholder must offer to buy out the rest. That mandatory offer ran on the Bolsa de Valores de Cabo Verde from 21 May to 4 June 2026.
The offer covered 532,413 shares, about 40% of the bank, at 14,918 escudos each, roughly €135. Holders of 32,300 shares accepted, lifting Coris’s stake from 59.81% to 62.25% when the trade settled on 5 June.
The rest of the register stays diverse. Cape Verde’s national social security fund still holds 12.54%, and Garantia, an insurer tied to Portugal’s Fidelidade group, keeps 5.79%.
The low take-up is itself revealing. Only about 6% of the shares on offer were tendered, which means most of BCA’s 672 minority holders chose to stay invested alongside their new majority owner.
A Burkinabè banking empire
Idrissa Nassa founded Coris Bank International in Burkina Faso in 2008 with about $3 million in capital. Less than two decades later the group holds more than $9 billion in assets.
Coris now operates in 11 countries, from Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire to Senegal, Togo, Benin, Mali, Guinea, Chad, Niger and Guinea-Bissau. Cape Verde is the newest, and the first beyond the West African mainland.
Its growth has a clear pattern. Coris buys the operations that global banks are shedding, including Standard Chartered’s retail arm in Côte d’Ivoire in 2023 and Société Générale’s units in Chad and Mauritania in 2024.
The BCA deal fits the template exactly. A retreating European state bank sells, and an ambitious African group steps in.
That strategy mirrors a continent-wide retreat. International lenders have spent recent years selling African subsidiaries to focus on home markets, and a handful of ambitious regional groups have been the buyers.
Why an island bank, and why now
Cape Verde is small, but its location is the point. The archipelago sits in the Atlantic with long commercial and financial ties to Europe, giving Coris a bridge between West Africa and markets further afield.
The takeover needed two green lights. Both Portugal’s Council of Ministers and the Banco de Cabo Verde, the island nation’s central bank, signed off before the first stake changed hands in Praia in January.
Local officials have framed the outcome as a vote of confidence. BCA board chairman Gilberto Barros called it “a mark of confidence in the market”, and said the bank would keep financing companies and the state.
The stock exchange, for its part, hopes new ownership will push modernisation, digital services and lending to small businesses.
The South-South thread
The deal is small in dollars but large in meaning. Across the continent, African groups are increasingly buying the branches that European banks no longer want to run.
In a lusophone market like Cape Verde, that shift also speaks to readers in our part of the world. The same Portuguese-language networks that connect Lisbon and Brazil run through Praia, and the owner of the local bank is now West African rather than European.
Cape Verde itself has leaned on that openness. The islands run a services-driven economy built on tourism, remittances and trade, and a stronger, better-capitalised national bank is central to financing the next stage of growth.
For investors, it is a reminder that some of the most interesting consolidation in African finance is now domestic. The capital, and the ambition, are increasingly home-grown.
None of this happens in isolation from the wider contest for influence in Africa. As Western institutions step back, the question of who finances the continent, and on what terms, is increasingly answered closer to home.
Frequently asked questions
What did Coris Holding buy in Cape Verde?
Coris Holding raised its stake in Banco Comercial do Atlântico, Cape Verde’s biggest bank, to 62.25%. It had bought an initial 59.81% in January 2026 from Portugal’s state-owned Caixa Geral de Depósitos.
Who is behind Coris Holding?
It was founded by Burkinabè billionaire Idrissa Nassa, who started Coris Bank International in 2008. The group now holds more than $9 billion in assets across 11 countries.
Why did the stake rise to 62.25%?
Cape Verde’s rules required a mandatory buyout offer to minority shareholders after Coris took control. Holders of 32,300 shares accepted during the 21 May to 4 June 2026 window, lifting the stake from 59.81% to 62.25%.
Why does the deal matter beyond Cape Verde?
It is part of a wider trend of African groups buying the operations that European banks are leaving. In a Portuguese-speaking Atlantic market, it also marks a shift from European to African ownership of local finance.
Connected Coverage
This story is part of our ongoing series, Africa: The New Scramble. For more on African capital crossing borders, see how a Nigerian bank cracked open Ethiopia’s financial frontier, and how Ghana’s Kasapreko pulled off a record-breaking IPO.
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