Thirteen banks are poised to carry on in business going by the new rule of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) that sets N100 billion equity capital for offshore expansion. The rule is to come into force before year end.
The banks will have to set up a holding company to keep their offshore interest or step back and remain a national bank with just N25 billion capital base. Of the 24 banks in operation, those with equity capital in excess of the N100 billion required include Diamond Bank, Intercontinental, Fidelity, Guaranty Trust, First City Monument, Access Bank and Oceanic Bank. Others are Zenith, United Bank of Africa, Fin Bank, Bank PHB and Union Bank.
Zenith Bank led the pack with N338 billion followed by First Bank with N337billion, United Bank of Africa, N336 billion and Bank PHB N253 billion. Others are: Oceanic Bank, N210 billion, Intercontinental Bank, N200 billion, Access Bank N185 billion, Guaranty Trust Bank N182 billion and Fidelity Bank N135 billion. First CITY Monument Bank has N130 billion, Union Bank N119.160 billion, Fin Bank N101.5 billion and Diamond Bank, N100 billion.
However, Citibank, Ecobank Nigeria, Stanbic IBTC and Standard Chartered Bank may be in a peculiar category, given their membership of global multinational groups. Stanbic IBTC Bank has N80.67 billion. Ecobank has N76.82 billion; Citi Bank has N37.69 billion and Standard Chartered N42 billion.
Other banks below offshore branch threshold include Wema Bank, which has N25 billion capital base, Unity Bank, N42 billion, Skye Bank N86.9 billion and Equitorial Trust Bank N32.12 billion. Sterling Bank has N31.27 billion; Afribank- N35 billion and Spring Bank with a negative equity capital of N90 billion.
Instructively, Intercontinental Bank, Fin Bank, Bank PHB, Union Bank and Oceanic Bank in the offshore categories may have suffered some erosion in equity capital arising from their non-performing loans and toxic assets. The CBN had injected over N600billion into banks mid-last year to shore up depleting equities. The apex bank complained then that the sector suffers toxic assets in excess of N1.2 trillion.
To implement the new licensing regime, the CBN stated that it will replace the existing universal banking licence with a new licence which terms will be restricted to the nature of the banks’ specific activities. The new structure will come with monoline banking, like commercial banking and specialised banking, such as non-interest banking, microfinance banking and primary mortgage Institutions.
Under the Monoline banking, the apex bank stated that three categories of banks will be considered. They are Regional bank, National and International bank. The regional bank will operate in a "minimum of five and a maximum of 10 contiguous states" in addition to having the word "Regional" in its name. The minimum capital for this category of bank will be N15 billion. The national with branch network restricted to Nigerian will have a minimum capital of N25billion and international bank with offshore branches with minimum capital of N100 billion.




Are some of these banks not the ones CBN say they are to be sold? What are we doing in this country? Who is really fooling who?