Dubai-based lender Emirates NBD will complete the takeover of Turkey's DenizBank in the first half of this year, DenizBank's current owner Sberbank has confirmed.

Sberbank, one of Russia's biggest lenders, had acquired 99.85 percent of DenizBank for TL 6.5 billion back in 2015. Last May, it sold the stake to Emirates NBD for TL 14.6 billion.

The annual report of Sberbank included an assessment of the deal. It stressed that the acquisition requires the approval of the banking regulatory agencies in Turkey, Russia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

DenizBank was first acquired by Turkey's Zorlu Holding in 1997 from the Privatization Administration. The bank was further acquired in October 2006 by Dexia, a Franco-Belgian financial group from Europe. Having been run by Dexia for six years, DenizBank has operated under Sberbank since 2012.

The Emirates NBD banking group is an important player in the UAE's corporate and retail banking sector. It has been operating actively in different areas, including Islamic banking, private banking and asset management. Emirates NBD runs 230 branches worldwide and has operations in the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore and the U.K. and representatives in China and Indonesia.