Access Bank Plc, through its wholly owned subsidiary Access Bank UK Limited, has acquired a 76% majority stake in AfrAsia Bank Limited, a commercial bank based in Mauritius.

The deal marks a significant milestone in Access Bank’s ongoing global expansion drive, which now appears to be unfolding at a rapid pace.

The acquisition received full regulatory clearance from the Bank of Mauritius and the Financial Services Commission, sealing Access Bank’s entrance into one of Africa’s top-rated international financial centers.

AfrAsia Bank, headquartered in Mauritius’ International Financial Centre, is known for its role in bridging African, Asian, and global markets. Its client base includes high-net-worth individuals, family offices, corporations, and international investors operating in fast-growing economies. The bank also maintains a representative office in South Africa, reinforcing its continental relevance.

“The Board of Directors of AfrAsia Bank Limited wishes to inform stakeholders that The Access Bank UK Limited has completed the acquisition of a 76% majority stake in the bank’s share capital,” AfrAsia said in a statement confirming the transaction.

IBL Ltd, AfrAsia’s founding shareholder, will retain a 7.89% minority stake, signaling sustained investor confidence even as majority ownership changes hands.

The deal extends Access Bank UK’s operational reach beyond its current international locations—London, Dubai, Paris, Hong Kong, Malta, and Lagos—and folds AfrAsia into its growing global network.

Access Bank UK is noted for its strong balance sheet, prudent financial governance, and high capital adequacy levels. AfrAsia is expected to benefit from these institutional strengths while preserving its client-focused banking model.

“The Access Bank UK Limited will be supported by the Bank’s strong and dedicated team, whose proven track record and extensive ability in banking and investment have contributed to making it one of the leading banking institutions in the region,” the joint statement added.

Second Deal in One Month: A Pattern of Aggressive Expansion

This acquisition comes just weeks after Access Bank finalized its takeover of Standard Chartered’s Consumer, Private, and Business Banking division in Tanzania, signaling a deliberate expansion into East Africa. The Tanzanian acquisition was part of Standard Chartered’s broader exit strategy from smaller African markets, including Angola, Cameroon, The Gambia, and Sierra Leone, as it pivots toward high-value global wealth clients.

Access Bank’s back-to-back acquisitions suggest a deliberate strategy to strengthen its pan-African footprint while simultaneously extending its global banking capabilities, particularly in offshore banking and wealth management, two areas in which AfrAsia already has operational expertise.

These moves also reflect Access Bank’s bid to capture a growing investment-savvy and mobile client base that demands cross-border financial solutions, modern digital platforms, and access to international markets.

Access Bank is Nigeria’s largest bank by assets. As of Q1 2025, it had total assets of N39.08 trillion, approximately $25.43 billion.

What The Deal Means for Access Bank

Access Bank gains not just a gateway into Mauritius’ sophisticated financial services sector by integrating AfrAsia into its ecosystem, but also a strategic springboard to Asia and offshore investment flows. Mauritius, long seen as a conduit for capital into Africa, offers tax treaties, robust financial regulations, and a stable economic environment, making it a valuable base for banking operations.

Access Bank’s bold international acquisitions reinforce its ambition to become Africa’s gateway to the world—a financial powerhouse that competes not just within Africa but globally. The swift execution of these deals within a month suggests that more regional and international transactions could be on the horizon.

While global financial institutions continue to recalibrate and exit smaller African markets, Access Bank appears poised to fill the vacuum, building a continent-wide and globally connected banking institution with the scale and vision to serve both emerging and mature economies.

Intel is making the deepest cuts in its history, shedding nearly a quarter of its workforce, retreating from multi-billion-dollar projects in Europe and Latin America, and warning it may abandon its foundry ambitions altogether if it cannot secure anchor clients — all part of an aggressive strategy under new CEO Lip-Bu Tan to reverse the company’s prolonged decline.

The chipmaker on Thursday revealed in its Q2 2025 earnings that it would end the year with approximately 75,000 core employees, down from 99,500 at the end of 2024. That’s a cut of roughly 24,000 workers, or about 15% of the company’s total workforce, when factoring in other organizational trimming. The layoffs are not just numbers on a spreadsheet — they reflect Intel’s decision to shut down or scale back major operations in Costa Rica, Poland, Germany, and even Ohio.

This massive restructuring underscores just how far Intel has fallen from its former glory. Earlier this month, Tan delivered a sobering admission that stunned the tech world: “We are not in the top 10 semiconductor companies anymore.”

Abandoning Global Projects, Consolidating Plants

Intel is abandoning its much-publicized plans to build chip “mega-fabs” in Germany and an assembly and test facility in Poland. Both projects were once seen as symbols of Intel’s global resurgence — €30 billion was earmarked for the German facility alone — but Tan’s new leadership has opted to axe them entirely, saying they no longer fit the company’s demand-aligned model.

In Costa Rica, where Intel employs over 3,400 people, the company will shutter its assembly and test operations, shifting those functions to Vietnam. A spokesperson told The Verge that around 2,000 employees will remain in engineering and corporate roles.

Even domestic expansion is taking a hit. Intel will slow construction at its Ohio plant, citing the need to match spending with real market demand. It’s a direct rebuke of the old strategy of “build it and they will come” — a model Tan flatly rejects.

“We will build what customers need when they need it, and earn their trust,” he said during the earnings call.

The turnaround plan is not just about layoffs. It’s a reckoning with Intel’s strategic missteps in recent years — overbuilding fabs without firm orders, fragmented operations, and chronic underperformance in the fast-growing AI sector, where Nvidia has raced far ahead.

Intel’s problems have lingered for a long time. The company’s stock lost 60% of its value in 2024, its worst year ever. It has hemorrhaged market share in CPUs, fallen behind in AI chip development, and seen key business units underperform. Even as competitors like AMD and Nvidia surged, Intel’s attempt to regain momentum with its foundry business stalled.

This quarter, Intel posted a $2.9 billion net loss on $12.9 billion in revenue, flat from a year earlier. The loss widened from $1.6 billion in the same period last year. The hit included an $800 million impairment charge tied to “excess tools with no identified re-use.”

Despite the loss, Intel slightly beat analyst expectations, delivering adjusted earnings of 10 cents per share, compared to estimates of just a penny. Revenue guidance for Q3 also topped Wall Street estimates.

Still, the small upside was overshadowed by Intel’s warning that it may pause or discontinue its foundry business if it cannot land a major external customer for its next-gen 14A process node. The company disclosed in an SEC filing that it has yet to secure significant external customers for any of its advanced nodes — a devastating blow for its foundry ambitions.

The AI Boom Left Intel Behind

While the broader semiconductor industry is booming, driven by artificial intelligence workloads and hyperscaler demand, Intel’s slice of that pie remains small. In Q2:

• Data center business rose just 4% to $3.9 billion
• PC chip sales declined 3% to $7.9 billion.
• Foundry revenue increased only 3% to $4.4 billion.

Tan acknowledged Intel had missed the AI wave but insisted that course correction is underway. He’s promised to personally oversee every major chip design — a rare move at his level — saying that “every major chip design needs to be personally reviewed and approved by me before tape out.”

Reshaping Intel’s Future

Tan has already taken bold action in his first few months. In addition to the layoffs and project cancellations, Intel:

• Shut down its automotive chip unit in June
• Spun off the RealSense computer vision division in July
• Plans to cut $17 billion in expenses this year alone
• Will launch the Panther Lake laptop chips later in 2025, with Nova Lake to follow by the end of 2026
• Is ramping up production of Lunar Lake chips in the next quarter

He also plans to name new leadership for the data center business next quarter and will unveil a “full-stack AI strategy” in the coming months.

“No More Blank Checks”

Tan’s internal memo to employees revealed a tough-love assessment of Intel’s past mistakes. “Over the past several years, the company invested too much, too soon – without adequate demand,” he wrote. “Our factory footprint became needlessly fragmented and underutilized.”

Intel will no longer approve projects without customer demand in hand. The upcoming 14A node — a critical part of Intel’s foundry roadmap — will be developed only if customer commitments are secured. “There will be no more blank checks,” Tan said.

Intel’s stock dropped 9% following the earnings release, erasing much of the modest gains it had posted earlier in the year. Analysts at Barclays warned that the company’s warning about its foundry future creates “more uncertainty to product roadmaps”, which in turn “makes customer adoption more unlikely.”

Still, JPMorgan analysts said the foundry pullback was a “positive step”, acknowledging that Intel’s recent spending spree was unsustainable.

A Path to Recovery?

The transformation underway at Intel may offer the most credible shot at recovery in years. While painful, the layoffs and strategic retreats are designed to stem the bleeding, consolidate the company’s core competencies, and focus on real market demand, not hopes or hype.

There’s no guarantee it will work. But Tan’s leadership marks a sharp break from Intel’s recent past — and for the first time in years, investors and employees alike have a clear, although difficult, roadmap for what comes next.

Planning a multinational career in our contemporary interconnected world demands a strategic approach focused on deepening our personal economy and global relevance. Tekedia Institute emphasizes that building a “personal economy” is crucial, and increasingly the architecture of that development could transcend national economies. The implication is that we must acquire skills and knowledge that are universally applicable and in demand across diverse markets.

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Sat, July 26 | 7pm-8.30pm WAT | Planning a Multinational Career – Ndubuisi Ekekwe | Zoom link in board