DOHA, Qatar, Sept. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- QNB Group is pleased to announce that it has obtained all applicable regulatory approvals from Qatar Central Bank (QCB) and Qatar Financial Market Authority (QFMA) to proceed with its share repurchase.
As permitted under Article 10 of QNB's Articles of Association and based on QNB Board of Directors' decision dated 11 September 2024, QNB will conduct its share buyback up to an amount of QAR2.9 billion in accordance with QFMA decision numbers 3 and 4 of 2024. QNB Group intends to fund its share buyback from its existing cash resources available with QNB. The Share Buyback will be conducted using an Open-Market Repurchase (OMR) mechanism as per applicable QFMA rules and regulations. The buyback will commence after the publication of interim financial statements for the nine months period ending 30 September 2024, subject to market conditions and in accordance with QFMA Share Buyback rules and regulations.
The decision to initiate a repurchase of QNB's own shares arose after careful consideration of several factors including current and future shareholders expectations, strength of QNB Group's financial position, growth strategy, strong return on equity, high quality and superior earnings, financial ratios associated with equity and liquidity, and continued confidence of the investor community.
QNB Group will continue to hold robust capital buffers, well above regulatory minimums of QCB and Basel III requirements, and does not anticipate any material impact on its capital and other ratios because of its intended share buyback.
Group statistics
QNB Group's presence spans more than 28 countries across three continents operating from approximately 900 locations, 5,000 ATMs supported by 30,000 staff.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Regulatory Approval of QNB Share Buyback
Regulatory Approval of QNB Share Buyback
Regulatory Approval of QNB Share Buyback
SEOUL, South Korea and REDMOND, Wash., Sept. 29, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- KT Corporation and Microsoft today unveiled a five-year multibillion-dollar partnership, which includes an investment from KT in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cloud technologies, and IT business, and a resource commitment from Microsoft in the areas of infrastructure and people. Through this partnership, the companies will propel KT's AI and ICT (AICT) transformation, and accelerate the advancement of AI services and innovation in Korea.
Following the agreement in June, KT and Microsoft have engaged in ongoing discussions to strengthen ties and outline key areas of collaboration and support. This strategic partnership is expected to drive progress in five pivotal areas: Development of customized AI solutions for Korea, delivering Korean sovereign cloud solutions, the establishment of an AI transformation (AX)-specialized service company, AI R&D capabilities advancement across Korea and KT's AICT transformation.
Developing Customized AI Solutions for Korea
KT and Microsoft will engage in engineering collaboration to develop a customized version of GPT-4o and explore developing a customized version of Microsoft's Phi family of small language models, with KT's extensive set of high-quality data around Korean culture and industries. These models will be used for both KT's internal and consumer-facing applications such as customer service chatbots, and also for building industry-specific AI solutions for B2B customers across industry verticals to best serve the needs of Korean consumers and businesses. KT will leverage Microsoft Copilot Studio and Azure AI Studio to develop custom AI agents aimed at differentiating customer experiences. KT plans to expand the development and utilization of KT-custom AI agents not only for consumer use cases in education, healthcare, and in-vehicle infotainment, but also for business applications. Importantly, Microsoft and KT will collaborate closely on further evolving KT's Responsible AI framework to help ensure the delivery of safe AI services for the Korea market.
"We are delighted with the partnership between KT and Microsoft, which presents a valuable opportunity to enhance our digital competitiveness," said Shinhan Bank, a leading financial group in Korea. "By utilizing the KT GPT model, specialized in Korean language and financial services, we aim to deliver innovative AI-driven services to the domestic financial consumers."
Delivering Korean sovereign cloud solutions
KT and Microsoft are partnering to develop and launch Secure Public Cloud services, which is KT's sovereign cloud solution built on Microsoft Cloud for Sovereignty for Korean-regulated industries. KT will drive its Secure Public Cloud business with support from Microsoft, enabling public sector and regulated industry customers to use new platform capabilities for securing data and workloads, providing access to the latest cloud and AI features available on Azure and helping them comply with local privacy and regulatory requirements.
Accelerating AI transformation through AX-Specialized service company
KT will establish a new AX-specialized service company to help businesses in Korea transform with the latest AI innovation. The forthcoming KT's AX-specialized service company will provide advanced Microsoft Cloud and AI expertise and solutions to the Korean market, with plans to expand to broader markets, including ASEAN. Microsoft will support this initiative over the next three years with professional consulting resources to build core practices and capabilities for the new entity.
Advancing AI R&D capabilities across Korea
Microsoft will support KT in establishing a co-innovation center aimed at accelerating Microsoft technology-driven AI transformation in the Korean market. This center will help businesses build, develop and prototype new AI solutions with Microsoft technology and KT's AI specialists. Furthermore, KT will invest in fostering new AI startups and developing a partner ecosystem to support nationwide AI transformation. Microsoft will support this initiative by providing Azure credits and technical expertise. For the future of technology collaboration, KT and Microsoft Research (MSR)'s research leaders and business visionaries will explore high-impact research initiatives in network modernization, AI for healthcare, and industry AI adoption and further collaborate with leading academic institutions partnering with KT.
Accelerating KT's AICT Transformation with organization-wide upskilling
KT will migrate and modernize existing IT workloads including mission-critical applications, to Microsoft Azure while developing a new data platform and AI services powered by Microsoft Fabric and Azure OpenAI Service. This collaboration will enhance KT's overall IT infrastructure, making it more agile, resilient, and secure, driving innovation and elevating the customer experience through intelligent automation. KT also intends to deploy Microsoft 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot, for all KT employees and developers to supercharge productivity of the entire business. Microsoft will assist KT in equipping more than 19,000 employees with cloud and AI skills and enabling more than 5,800 AX specialists to lead a successful transformation through KT group-wide skilling and co-engineering support.
"The partnership with Microsoft presents a pivotal opportunity, not only for technological collaboration but also for expanding Korea's AI foundation and driving transformative innovation across industries and daily life," said KT CEO Young-Shub Kim. "Leveraging this strategic partnership, we aim to rapidly evolve into an AICT company with unparalleled competitiveness in domestic and global markets." 
"Our strategic partnership brings together KT's industry expertise with the power of our entire tech stack, from Azure AI to Microsoft 365 Copilot," said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. "Together, we will help accelerate the AI transformation of Korean organizations across the private and public sector and build new AI-powered experiences for millions of consumers."
About KT Corporation
KT Corporation is a leading company in Korea's telecommunications and ICT industries. By building an AX innovation platform based on differentiated AI, Big Data and Cloud competitiveness, and offering it with outstanding network infrastructure, KT is driving evolution into an AICT (AI and ICT) company.
About Microsoft 
Microsoft (Nasdaq "MSFT" @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
For more information, press only:
Microsoft Media Relations, WE Communications for Microsoft, (425) 638-7777, rapidresponse@we-worldwide.com
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
KT Corporation and Microsoft Take 'Giant Step' to Accelerate AI Innovation in Korea
