Posted by By Omoh Gabriel, Business Editor on
Access Bank Managing Director, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhude said Wednesday that Access Bank Plc has concluded its first phase of consolidation and will start the second phase before the end of the week.
Access Bank Managing Director, Mr. Aigboje Aig-Imoukhude said Wednesday that Access Bank Plc has concluded its first phase of consolidation and will start the second phase before the end of the week. The second phase he said would involve acquisition of more banks details of which he said would be disclosed next week.
Aig-Imoukhude said that in the first phase the bank merged with two other banks namely Marina and Capital banks. From the result of the merger, the new Access Bank shareholders fund now stands at N28billion far above the prescribed minimum of N25billion. Giving further details of the merger, he said that the new bank now has a total asset base of N140billion, deposit base of N60billion, 77branches and a foreign currency lines of $250million being foreign investment put into the Bank by FMO of Netherlands.
The bank he said now has a staff strength of 490 out of about 831 staff from the three banks. He explained that initially, Access Bank had a total of 365 staff with a total asset of N97.14billion, total revenue of N4.1billion, profit before tax of N1.548billion and a shareholders fund of N17.07billion as at the time of the merger. On the other hand, Capital bank had a staff strength of 357, total asset of N20.88billion, total revenue of N1.18billion, profit before tax of -N135.844million and shareholders fund of N4.149billion. Marina Bank on its part had a staff strength of 109, total revenue of N350million, profit before tax of N12.51million and shareholders fund of N3.998billion and branch net work of 10. He said that based on the above indices profit per head of Access Bank was N4.243million, Capital Bank -N381,00 and that of Marina was N115,000. Continuing he said that staff per branch for Access Bank was 10, 19 for Capital Bank and 16 for Marina.
Aig-Imoukhude said that it was not true that the bank laid off staff with HND certificates and graduates of State Universities. The truth he said is that some category of staff did not meet the set criteria that was used in staff placement in the new Access Bank. He said that the bank is being fully integrated from the very beginning in order to minimise the friction that normally arise post integration.
He said that at the moment the bank is in the process of determining optimum operational impact and requirements for business redesign, how to implement a continuous improvement capability and provide the foundation for delivering on merger synergies and expected value once operations of the merged entity commences. On resource integration he said the new bank is rationalising its assets and facilities to meet long-term needs of the organization, capture learning and knowledge capital, implement compatible information & knowledge management system, communicate activities and benefits of the change program and reinforce new cultural norms/behavior.
He said that the bank has accomplish the target it set for itself at the beginning of the consolidation exercise that of achieving complete integration before December 2005 as a platform to launch the 2nd phase of the bank's consolidation game plan.