Posted by By Omoh Gabriel, Business Editor on
TWO new patterns of banks are emerging in the Nigeria landscape. The merged banks and the stand alone banks. The stand alone banks are Zenith Bank PLC, GTBank Plc, Oceanic Bank Plc, NIB and Chartered Bank. Eco Bank is likely to stand on its own if the promise by its parent body, Eco Transnational, is okayed.
LAGOS - TWO new patterns of banks are emerging in the Nigeria landscape. The merged banks and the stand alone banks. The stand alone banks are Zenith Bank PLC, GTBank Plc, Oceanic Bank Plc, NIB and Chartered Bank. Eco Bank is likely to stand on its own if the promise by its parent body, Eco Transnational, is okayed.
The merged groups are UBA, Intercontinental Bank, Access Bank, Afribank, Diamond Bank, FCMB, First Inland Bank, Unity Bank, First Bank, Union Bank, Skye Bank and Wema Bank.
Others in the merger groupings are Sterling Bank, First North Bank, IBTC/Chartered Bank, Platinum, Fidelity, Citizens Guardian and Devcom and Bank One. From available verified shareholders' fund, Intercontinental Bank is now the most capitalised bank in the country with N58 billion shareholders' fund. The new UBA now has a shareholders fund of N50.289 billion while Union Bank and First Bank have about N45 billion each.
Zenith Bank Plc has N38 billion; GTBank, N37 billion and Afribank N39.15 billion. In the emerging scenario, Skye Bank has a combined shareholders' fund of N37 billon and IBTC/Chartered Bank has N35 billion in shareholders' fund. Diamond Bank, Oceanic and First Inland Bank have shareholders' fund above N27 billion. Fidelity has N29 billion, FCMB has N27 billion. Citizens Guardian Bank has shareholders fund of N27billion while Platinum Bank has N25.4 billion.
IBTC Chartered Bank on its part has shareholders' fund of N35 billion. On the whole, 26 banks may eventually emerge from the consolidation if Bank One is able to make it due to the last minute pull out from the group by Co-operative Bank.
Most of the banks have crossed the first hurdle, that of meeting the regulatory requirement of N25billion. Bankers admit that a number of the groups were hurriedly put together. The issue, they said, was post merger integration. Where due diligence was not properly done, problem of share value for exchange might pose a big challenge to some of the merging group.
Integrating their manpower and technology may be yet another problem. Bankers fear that consolidation may have created openings for stealing and fraud by those managing the banks now who know that they have no future in the on-going consolidation. Next year, they said, would be the text of the success or otherwise of the exercise.