Senegalese billionaire Yerim Sow's Bridge Bank opens $118 million share sale on the BRVM

Bridge Bank Group Côte d'Ivoire, the Ivorian lender controlled by Senegalese billionaire Yerim Sow, has opened a public offer for a fifth of its shares, seeking about $118 million (67.5 billion CFA francs) ahead of a listing on West Africa's regional stock exchange.

The bank set out the terms at a press conference in Abidjan on Monday. Managing director Ehouman Kassi said it would sell 10 million shares at 6,750 CFA francs ($12) each, representing 20 percent of a share capital divided into 50 million shares.

Regulators cleared the deal at the end of June. The West African Economic and Monetary Union Financial Markets Authority, known as AMF-UMOA, approved the offering, and subscriptions will run from July 20 to Aug. 6, with the window closing early if the offer is fully taken up. Bridge Securities, the group's own brokerage, is arranging and leading the transaction.

Kassi said the money would go toward regional expansion, an overhaul of the bank's technology and digital systems, and a bigger balance sheet for lending to companies.

The sale reshuffles the register without loosening Sow's grip. Bridge Group West Africa, the financial holding company controlled by his Teyliom Group, will see its stake fall to 57 percent from 77 percent. Côte d'Ivoire's state social security fund, the Caisse Nationale de Prévoyance Sociale, keeps 20 percent, and smaller shareholders hold the remaining 3 percent. The free float will account for the other fifth.

The timetable has slipped since the deal was first laid out. Earlier plans had subscriptions running in late May with trading due to start on Aug. 31, a schedule that hinged on regulatory sign-off that came only at the end of June.

Bridge Bank arrives at the market on a run of strong numbers. Net banking income reached 16 billion CFA francs ($28 million) in the first quarter of 2026, up 23 percent from a year earlier, while net profit jumped 48 percent to 8 billion CFA francs ($14 million). Across the whole of 2025, the bank earned 27.2 billion CFA francs ($47 million), a 19 percent rise, on net banking income of 68 billion CFA francs ($118 million), and it ran a cost-to-income ratio of 41.8 percent.

Investors are being promised a steady payout. The bank said it intends to distribute 65 percent of its earnings as dividends over the next five years.

The lender was founded in Abidjan in 2006 by Teyliom's financial arm, with the West African Development Bank as an institutional co-founder, and built its name lending to small and medium-sized companies that larger French-owned and pan-African banks were slower to court. It later widened its reach to big corporates, public bodies, financial institutions and wealthier retail customers. It now runs about 14 branches and serves roughly 10,500 clients, including some 800 corporations and large SMEs, with total assets of around 800 billion CFA francs ($1.4 billion) and equity of about 75 billion CFA francs ($131 million).

Growth beyond Côte d'Ivoire has come in steps. Bridge Bank Senegal opened in December 2021 as the group's first banking subsidiary abroad, followed by an entry into Mali in 2024. A Guinea Conakry unit is targeted for 2027, and the group has sought approval in Burkina Faso.

Around the bank sits a cluster of financial businesses. Teyliom controls Bridge Securities, Bridge Asset Management and Bridge MicroFinance, all based in Côte d'Ivoire, along with a stake in Senegal's national economic development bank, BNDE. Private equity firm AfricInvest sold its minority holding in Bridge Group West Africa back to Teyliom in 2022, simplifying the ownership before the listing.

Sow, born in Dakar in 1967, made his first money in telecommunications. He launched Direct Access in 1988 and BIP Access in 1994, took stakes in several operators including Côte d'Ivoire's Loteny Telecom, and redirected his capital into long-term assets after MTN acquired control of that business in 2005. He created Teyliom in 2001 and turned it into a holding company with interests in real estate, hospitality, logistics, finance, industry and telecoms across 16 countries. Its Mangalis Hotel Group runs the Noom, Seen and Yaas hotel brands.

The listing matters for Abidjan's exchange as much as for the bank. Bridge Bank will become the 16th listed lender and the 48th listed company on the Bourse Régionale des Valeurs Mobilières, which serves the eight countries of the West African monetary union and has been trying to attract more issuers and deepen trading. The last banking flotation came in April 2025, when Benin's BIIC raised 100.45 billion CFA francs ($175 million), a record for a bank on the market.

What Sow gets in return is permanent capital, a currency for future acquisitions and a public valuation for one of Teyliom's most important assets. What investors get is a bet on whether a mid-sized SME lender can carry its Ivorian success into four or five new markets without straining its loan book.