http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/406e8650-ea69-11de-a9f5-00144feab49a.html

Excerpts:

Financial Times: We’ve had this “Sanusi tsunami” through the banking system. After the drama, now you’re trying to piece this system back together. Are we now moving on or are you still fighting the same battle you were fighting at the start?

Lamido Sanusi: I think the battle will continue to the extent that battles are fought on two fronts at the end of the day. You’ve got two parties. You don’t just toss something like this and walk away from it. They are not going to let you walk away. They are not going to walk into jail. So once you start this, you are in a fight until the end. For me, and I’ve said this over and over again, some of what you’ve seen in banking is just symptomatic of all that is wrong with the country.

FT: Just elaborate on that a little bit.

LS: If you take the abuse of office, if you take the corruption, if you take the impunity with which the rich do break the law, it’s something that happens across the board. The people you are dealing with are not isolated individuals. They are part of a group. They are part of a caste. They’ve got allies in politics. They’ve got allies in bureaucracy. And their allies work with them and they stick together. So it’s never easy to just say you are dealing with these CEOs [who were fired and face criminal charges] and that’s the end of it. You’ve got to realise, it would be very naïve to think that all the people who have been beneficiaries of their largesse, the political parties that have received donations, the politicians that have been funded, the sentry consultants and contractors that are around them, it would be very naïve to think that they are just going to watch you basically cut off what they see as a major source of financing.

. . . . .
FT: But the president, of course, has been sick and out of the country for three weeks. That support, presumably, isn’t there at the moment.

LS: It is. He’s still the president. I’m assuming that I have the support of the presidency. No one has signalled otherwise. Frankly, for me, I will continue doing what I’m doing and continue to at the best of my abilities. Whether the support will continue, I know that up to this point I’ve had no reason to think that that support has waned.

. . . . . .
FT: Have you increased your own security?

LS: Well, the government did.

FT: The government decided you needed more security?

LS: Yes. From the very beginning, the president decided that there was no point taking chances. It was from August 14th [the date of the first bail-out and dismissal of executives]. He basically just asked that the security around me be increased.

. . . . . . .
FT: This is the oil loans business or real estate.

LS: In one of the banks, for instance, you’ve got huge insider-related transactions. The loans given by the CEO to herself or to her family members or to companies and SPVs floated instead of by her. But we also have assets that we’ve identified in Ikoyi, in VI [both wealth Lagos islands], in Abuja, in Port Harcourt, in Dubai. And there will be a whole legal process for forfeiture of those assets. So in theory, you could take that whole class of loans and buy at some discount from the bank and then the AMC gets those assets when the legal process is completed. And that is where you get the recovery.

FT: Is this across all the banks, are there similar cases? How much do you think is that chunk, in that real estate recovery?

LS: I think it will be substantial. If you take a bank like Oceanic, which is the one we are talking about, about 70 per cent of the loan is non-accrual. At least 70 per cent of that is somehow or other tied to the CEO and her family. So it looks like a big problem but it’s really a rather simple problem to resolve because you would then say, look, I want 70 per cent of your NPLs. I buy at 80 or 90 per cent and you just go and take it as recovery. And the EFCC then goes after all those assets and more. And then we can see what we can recover.

FT: But this is a new phase of recovery, isn’t it? This is a new phase of the recovery process because we’ve all been thinking about the stocks and the oil speculation but you’re talking about going after the hard assets.

LS: Well, yes, we always talked about the stocks because that was the quickest one to do and was what we thought we could do before the end of December. It’s not looking likely now. It might spill over into January but these stocks are easy in the sense that you can say this is the value today. This is what was paid for them. This is what we are paying. You could pay multiples, you could pay a premium but at least you know exactly what you are doing. With the property assets everywhere – and note Dubai property has gone down as well, so you have the same, property in Dubai, it was the same bubble that has also passed – you have a similar situation but the valuations are a bit more difficult, a bit more complex. So ultimately I think that the major consideration is going to be that we are in a very fortunate fiscal position today. We run a notional fiscal surplus. We have a current account surplus in excess of $6bn –

FT: But in real terms, you’re going to be in an enormous budget deficit, $10bn.

LS: Well, we had a budget deficit last year. A $10 billion deficit, if we spent all the money, yes. But if you took a one trillion naira cost for resolution, it’s $10 billion over 10 years, so it’s one billion additional [annually], okay? And today the gross national debt is about 11 per cent of GDP. So a trillion naira, I keep saying, with a GDP of 55 trillion, a trillion naira is less than 2 per cent of GDP.

To be conservative, I would say if we spent a trillion over the ten year period, we may recover 50 per cent of that. So I would think that there would still be a net cost to the taxpayer for the other 500bn.

. . . . . . . .
FT: Is 15 banks or thereabouts still your target?

LS: I never had a target of 15. I was asked if I thought there would be a chance, and I was asked what my guess would be, and I said we might have about 15. In principle I don’t think it’s a wise idea to aim for a very small number of institutions, because the experience is that if you create a small number of very large institutions they have these too big to fail problem. And also what we’ve seen, by looking at the numbers since the consolidation [in 2004], is that the lending to SMEs shrunk to less than 1 per cent of total loans from about 10 per cent.

. . . . . . .
FT: Another thing you said in Cape Town in October was that those discussions with potential foreign investors were imminent. Are those discussions now underway?

LS: Yes. The financial advisors are talking to likely investors, in the sense that they have obtained expressions of interest. A number of the banks’ boards have given them the formal mandate to seek and to solicit for investors.

FT: These are Standard, Deutsche …

LS: … and Chapel Hill Denham. So, where we are today is we think there should be a technical bid process, where the primary concern is to see if there are institutions that have expressed an interest in coming to Nigeria, and that these institutions have a track record and an ability to run a bank. And the next stage, obviously, is then what would it take to make this deal happen, and that is when we come to the financials.

FT: So, where are we now? Are people preparing these technical bids?

LS: I think at the moment what we’ve had is we’ve had a number of road shows; we’ve had a number of institutions that have said they might be interested. Some have said, look, we’ll wait for the numbers to come out in December. We’re trying to engage the universe of interest and to see what is likely to be a serious interest and what is just fishing, and then try to assess the likelihood of a deal actually materialising. A bank might be interested; their regulator might not support it. So, that process is ongoing.

FT: If I want to buy a Nigerian bank would I have had to run a bank in Africa before?

LS: No, I don’t think so. I think once it can be established that if it’s a bank, it’s a strong bank, it should be fine because then they know what it takes to run a bank.

FT: And is there scope for internal consolidation as well, for strong Nigerian banks?

LS: Yes, a number of banks have expressed an interest. Some of them probably don’t have the capital at the moment. One of the models that seems to be gaining currency is the possibility of a foreign bank coming into an unaffected Nigerian bank, and then using that as a stepping stone to acquire one of the troubled banks.

FT: And that is another thing that is in discussion?

LS: There are one or two cases of possibilities of that happening.

FT: Do you have a rough sense of time when you might want to get around to this technical bid process?

LS: It’s on. I think that we should be able by early next year to have a list we’ve basically told people that would like to have expressions of interest in by January. The advisors will tell us these are the people that express an interest in these institutions, and in our view this should be your preferred partner or this should be your next preferred partner. And then we can go and either say go ahead and talk to them and see.

FT: And how many foreign banks have expressed interest?

LS: I don’t have an exact number now. I’m aware that [the advisors] have talked to about four banks, I think. And they’ve also had a few investor groups who have said that they would like to come in.

FT: But how can you sell what you don’t own? You put in these seven-year convertible bonds, that was the bail out, but that doesn’t mean that you own those banks.

LS: Well, two things. Whatever we do will have to be governed by the law. So, if we need anybody’s approval to sell we would get that approval to sell.

FT: Including existing shareholders?

LS: If we needed those approvals we would.

FT: But what if they’re not forthcoming?

LS: We will cross that bridge when we get to the bridge. You’ve seen the numbers: technically these banks are creditor-owned banks.

. . . . . . .
FT: There have been mistake along the way, inaccuracies in the debtors’ list or what have you. Has it all gone according to plan?

LS: It’s gone wholly according to plan. I think the mistakes that have been made are not mistakes of principle, and they are not mistakes that are due, let’s say, to a lack of diligence. There has been collateral damage. I’ll give you a few examples. We’ve had names that were published as directors of companies and they had left the board, but the records of banks did not show that they had resigned. And when people came to us and said look, we have letters, we resigned from this company, we’ve actually filed; when this came to the commission we have promptly apologised and said well, we regret it, but this is the information that we had from the banks. Within the grand scheme of things we’re not perfect and we do acknowledge that maybe one or two things could have been done better. I haven’t seen anything that I would have done differently.

. . . . . . .
FT: Didn’t you have to reverse course over [removing Mike] Adenuga [from the board of] Equatorial Trust Bank?

LS: Yes, but that wasn’t about making a mistake at all; it was about a negotiation process that followed his removal. I had to make a number of judgements. I’ll tell you what the judgements were.

One, ETB: as a bank accounts for less than 1 per cent of total market. When you net out the part of the business that is related to Adenuga’s own companies it was about 0.5 per cent. How much energy are we to dissipate on that bank? It was unlisted, it therefore had no capital market related issues, no capital market manipulations, it didn’t have any margin loans, the number of loans were significantly associated with companies owned by Adenuga, he agreed to make immediate payments; I think so far he has paid down Naira 26bn. We did turn those into performing loans. He committed to re-capitalise the institution to dilute his ownership and move very quickly, under our own guidance, into an M&A arrangement, on the condition he accepted our own appointed management to remain in place.

FT: This is an M&A arrangement with whom?

LS: I’m not at liberty now to talk about the institution he is talking to, but he did disclose he was in the process. He started a process, and he subsequently came and said he had started a process of discussion with one of the local banks that would basically take the bank into a larger institution. Now, given all of that, and given the fact that I had Union, Intercontinental, Oceanic, PHB to deal with, I made the judgement that given that there were also other things which this same person owns – Glo, which is a telecoms company, [petroleum group] Conoil – and as someone also looking at the macro economic implications of actions I had to think of whether it was worth risking trouble in the oil marketing and telecoms sectors. Because if people thought Adenuga was not credit worthy, and if the business of Glo or Conoil suffered, I had to make the judgements as to whether, for the kind of infractions we saw in a bank that was half a percent of the market, were worth taking that risk. So, that was the judgement I made. So, it wasn’t about a mistake; it was about if we can fix this problem, and by making sure he complies with these rules, then… Look, they are going to pay us back the Naira 30bn we gave them; this week they are going to pay it back. So, that is how quickly it’s been resolved.


. . . . . . . . . .
FT: You will have seen the websites touting you for the presidency.

LS: No, I haven’t, honestly.

FT: Do you have any presidential ambitions?

LS: No, I don’t. I have ambitions to be the emir of Kano [to which he is in line].

hmm interesting interview

Will Sanusi be hung out to dry when Yara is no longer fit for office? Question mark?

I strongly doubt if he wont go with Yar'adua should Yar'adua go. In fact, one Punch columnists claimed that text messages have been flying around that Sanusi should be ready to go with his boss.