1 UBA: The bank which emerged after the fusion of former United Bank for Africa and former Standard Trust Bank is already there. With over 400 branches spread across the country, it wants to be a neighborhood bank in Nigeria as well as in the African region.

2. First Bank: First Bank is planning to acquire some smaller banks as well as extend its boundaries beyond Nigeria. Already, it has received both the CBN and SEC's consent to combine its business with MBC International Bank Plc and FBN (Merchant Bankers) Limited. Its deal with Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), the parent company of Ecobank Nigeria Plc, with a view to consolidating with the group, would enable it capture the West African markets in the second phase of its consolidation.

3. Union Bank: CBN has been granted Approval-In- Principle to Union Bank of Nigeria, Broad Bank, Universal Trust Bank and Hallmark for the merger arrangements, while integration of their business operations has commenced.

4. Zenith Bank: Zenith is going it alone. The bank which was one of the first to surpass the N25 billion capital base requirement has already begun a reengineering process to enable it take a substantial share of the Nigerian market as well as play a leading role in the African market.

5. Guaranty Trust Bank: GTBank was one of the few banks that never had problems with the CBN threshold. With subsidiaries in some West African countries, it is realigning to battle the region with others.

6. Intercontinental Bank: The Intercontinental Group is now operating as a single entity. The bank has therefore become the second consolidated bank in the country after the UBA and with the largest shareholders' funds in the Nigerian banking industry.

7. Standard Chartered: With a new investment of about $147 million, the bank has now been recapitalised. The new financial position of the bank, which presently stands at N26 billion is expected to be announced soon after CBN's approval.

8. Oceanic Bank: After the completion of the verification of capital exercise by the CBN, the bank now has about N26.5 billion as shareholders' fund. It has acquired two banks (International Trust Bank and Stanbic Bank). Significant growth in shareholders' fund is expected from its recently concluded 2005 financial year.

9. Access Bank Plc: The bank has emerged the third consolidated bank with a combined capital base of N28 billion, having combined its business with that of Marina International Bank Plc and Capital International Bank Plc. Access Bank has commenced the second phase of its consolidation with the move to acquire Midas Bank Plc.

10. Afribank Group: CBN has granted Approval-In-Principle to the Afribank Group that comprises Trade Bank Plc and Afribank International (Merchant Bankers) Limited. The group has begun the initial valuation on the three banks to determine the share exchange ratio. CBN has approved a total shareholders' fund of N25. 016 billion for Afribank (Afribank Nigeria Plc and Afribank International Bank (Merchant Bankers) consolidated.

11. IBTC Chartered: The bank which was to go it alone has now received CBN's approval-in-principle to merge with Chartered Bank and Regent Bank. This is expected to bring their shareholders' fund to over N35 billion. The three banks last week held their court-ordered meetings where shareholders overwhelmingly supported the merger.

12. Diamond Bank Group: Diamond Bank has finally acquired Lion Bank having received final approval of the regulatory authorities. The group's shareholders' fund now stands at about N28 billion and is expected to go up to about N31 billion at the end of this exercise.

13. Skye Bank Group: Skye Bank Plc comprising Prudent Bank Plc, EIB International Bank Plc, Bond Bank and Reliance Bank now has a shareholders' fund of about N30 billion. The group has received CBN's approval-in-principle. A new entrant into the group is Cooperative Bank which is expected to bring on board about N5 billion in shareholders' fund subject to CBN's verification of the last capital raised.

14. Wema Bank Group: comprises Wema Bank, National Bank and Lead Bank. The group is well positioned to meet the CBN's requirement. Wema Bank recently garnered gross proceeds amounting to N16.64 billion at the end of its public offer and added to an initial shareholders' fund of N8.06 billion would put it at about N24.7 billion. Wema Bank has gotten the CBN approval-in principle to acquire National and Lead Banks.

15. FCMB Group: Comprises First City Monument Bank and Co-operative Development Bank has now concluded the court-ordered meetings. The group has also acquired NAMBL. With a shareholders' fund now in excess of N27 billion, the group is set to conclude all necessary regulatory requirements and fuse into one before the end of November 2005.

16. Platinum Bank: Platinum Habib Group has filed for CBN's approval in principle. The fusion of the two banks would produce over N25 billion capital base. Their shareholders at respective court-ordered meetings approved the scheme merger.

17. Fidelity Bank: The bank now has FSB International Plc and has received the CBN approval-in-principle on their merger pact. It has also received pre-merger consent of the CBN for its merger with Manny Bank. CBN has approved N11.7 billion of the offer proceeds of Fidelity Bank, representing 70 per cent of its offer target. The approval has raised Fidelity's shareholders' funds to about N29 billion. Shareholders of Fidelity and SB Banks at respective court-ordered meetings approved the scheme merger.

18. NIB/Citibank: The Citigroup - parent company of NIB recently made good its promise to recapitalise its local subsidiary with the injection of over N11.7 billion ($90 million). This sum, combined with the contribution of the Nigerian shareholders, once formally approved by the CBN, will double the NIB's capital to N25 billion.

19. Sterling Bank Group: This group consists of Trust Bank of Africa Limited, Magnum Trust Bank, NBM Bank, NAL Bank Plc and Indo Nigeria Bank. Presently, the group has over N25 billion capitalisation. The group, which would be in court this week to secure a date for its court-ordered meetings, have appointed top management positions which would run the emerging bank with Mr. Babatunde Dabiri as the MD/CEO. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the merger scheme of the Sterling Bank group, paving way for the five banks in the group to hold court ordered extra ordinary general meetings as from December 12, 2005.

20. First Inland Bank: Comprising First Atlantic Bank Plc and Inland Bank (Nig.) Plc. The group recently held a successful Court-Ordered Meetings of shareholders of all the banks. IMB and NUB International Banks have joined, a development that would take the combined shareholders' funds of the group to N30 billion.

21. NorthOmega Bank: NUB International Bank Plc has opted out of the group. The remaining banks left are Bank of the North, Omega Bank Plc New Africa Bank Plc, Trans International Bank Plc and Fountain Trust Bank Plc. The group has since been granted a pre-merger consent by the CBN.

22. Devcom/ETB: The CBN has approved the subscription of N9 billion via private placement which, automatically takes the total amount raised by private placement to N13 billion. This, in addition to the capitalised profits of ETB brings to N26.5 billion the combined shareholders' fund of the group. Last week the two merging banks held their court-ordered meetings where shareholders overwhelmingly supported the merger.

23. Citizen Guardian: The group comprises Citizens Bank, Guardian Express Bank, and ACB International Bank Plc. While Citizens pulled out of an earlier arrangement with Union Bank, Guardian Express also pulled out of an earlier arrangement with Platinum Bank. The group, which hopes to have a combined shareholders' fund in excess of N27 billion recently got approval-in-principle for their merger. An interim board chaired by Prof. Anya O. Anya has been inaugurated.

24. Unity Bank Group: Unity Bank Group had successfully concluded its court-ordered meetings on Monday 5th December 2005, while Intercity Bank Plc, the vehicle for the merger, had conducted its Extra-ordinary General Meeting on the same day during which its shareholders approved the change of its name to Unity Bank Plc and the creation of additional 30 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each. An agreement was signed on Thursday 8th December 2005 which admitted NNB International Bank Plc into the fold. This means there are now seven constituent banks in the Group including the Tropical Commercial Bank Plc, Pacific Bank Limited, First Interstate Bank Plc and CentrePoint Bank Plc. NUB, NNB and IMB.

25. Ecobank Nigeria: Following its successful public offer of 4.8 million ordinary shares of 50 kobo each at N3.20 per share, Ecobank Nigeria Plc now has a shareholders' funds of N20 billion. Its parent company, Ecobank Transnational Incorporation (ETI) has made a commitment to supply the shortfall that may be required to achieve the stipulated minimum capital before December 31, recapitalisation deadline. Ecobank Nigeria's public offer is currently being verified by the regulatory authorities.

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The 25 Consolidated Banks In Nigeria

Source, please!

At the age of 55, we have succesfully created upto 36 States (plus ABUJA) and 25 megabanks who will secure our financial fortune. How many years more do we need to also secure our political destiny too. Or can the banks now provide the pillar for producing this? Talk about helping the hand that feeds you.

well to my opinion, i think making these banks better is part of economy and political stability of nigera

I was wondering, as an outsider, what this will mean for the financial services offered, especially concerning electronic payments and ATM's? Do you have any insights to offer on that?

This whole consolidation circus (as well as the Transcorp mumbo-jumbo) is about having the economy under the control of a small number of privileged people and in that respect it seems to have worked marvelously well!

Why are you nervous? Nigeria is big enough the absorb another 20 Transcorp and more mega banks.

There should be strict guidelines for operating banking services though. Maybe the way these consolidations went was not kosher, but Banks do need a certain level of capitalisation.

for me this idea is the best because there are some banks in nigeria that you cant put your money. for example when jj okocha's money was gone with the bank that went bankrupt the other time. if okocha has kept his money in one of the big banks, there will be no problem for him. this reform will make our money more safer and secure.

Banks do need a certain level of capitalization

Lets assume that you are right and banks need a certain level of capitalization. How do you determine how much capitalization a particular bank needs? Isn't not something for the management of each bank to decide? Since when have Government bureaucrats been more adept at predicting the needs of an industry than industry insiders themselves?

Nairaland wouldn't be here today if the government had decided that one needs $300 minimum to start a website. I don't believe that those who have access to the largest pools of money are necessarily the right people to be in control of the banking sector - or any sector for that matter. They should leave room for those entrepreneurs who have the ability to achieve more with less money.

Apart from those that did their merger and re-capitalisation early, rushed their submissions to meet the deadlines i think some of them have would have problems ...

What do u thinki will happen to the shareholders of these banks

i watched on Nta how some customers were locked up in banks n refused withdraws in banks that didnt meet up  

And now the CBN is calling them "failed banks". Is it not the CBN that caused them to fail by asking them to raise money that they don't really need to run their businesses?

I didnt see Chartered Bank. I thot they are one of the best in Nigeria. I use them and I like the service.

Seun:

Lets assume that you are right and banks need a certain level of capitalization. How do you determine how much capitalization a particular bank needs? Isn't not something for the management of each bank to decide? Since when have Government bureaucrats been more adept at predicting the needs of an industry than industry insiders themselves?

Either you put up capitalisation requirements or you have strict, enforeced guidelines that banks have to live by. In Belgium, banks can never borrow out more than 2 times the capital they have at any time, they cannot use the money deposited by their customers to make investments (only long term loans are acceptable), they have to use their own capital. There are lots of other guidelines they need to follow, if they cannot meet hese requirement, they are not licensed to be a bank.

A bank is not just any business, it is paramount that the deposits of the customers are protected, even if the bank goes down. This was not the case during the twenties and thirties of last century and it brought down the whole world economy. Free markets are not an all or nothing affair.

I agree with Seun that it's not right to impose an arbitrary minimum capitalisation amount for all banks to comply with. Of course it's possible for a bank's capitalisation value to be much less and for it to be a successful profitable bank.

However, I suspect that the imposition of the minimum amount was a means to an end. Perhaps the idea is to get the banks to think beyond the current traditional means of making money by banking, to raise their game, so to speak. No bank can expect to keep on trading by the usual cosy round tripping or financing of import deals, especially because there are now about 20 other big banks breathing down its neck and looking to grab market share from it. This would be different if there were lots of small banks - the big banks would feel less threatened.

But Nferyn is also right that the new banks need to be properly regulated. We're now hearing all sorts of stories of financial mismanagement from the dozen or so banks that have failed to find partners in the new dispensation. This shouldn't have happened if the CBN was doing its job properly.

d.

Ok, let me simplify the argument so we don't keep mixing things up and regurgitating the rubbish that we have been fed through the media.

Regulation is good. That's what they've been doing all along before the so-called consolidation. Monitoring of banks, very good. Protection of customer deposits, admirable. But all that can be done without the arbitrary minimum capitalization rule. If you want to nip corruption in the banks, you can investigate them. You don't have to force an unecessary "reform" on everybody to flush out a few bad elements. Can't you people see this simple fact?

Look at forums. Let's say in a bid to reduce the spread of misinformation through forums the Internet Society instead of dealing the problem directly decides to impose a minimum memberization rule on forums such that any forum with less than 10,000 members by the end of January is a failed forum that needs to be "cherry picked". Considering the fact that Nairaland is the only Nigerian forum that has so many members, won't you say that the rule is biased in our favor? This is exactly what has happened in the banking sector.

Regulation is good: I don't think it should be too hard for CBN to regulate the 40 or so banks that were forced into marriages of convenience due to this arbitrary policy. If they are inconveniencing the whole industry just to make it a little bit easier for them to regulate, I'd say that's very arrogant.

Investigation is good: the CBN can pump some extra money into the treasury of the EFCC so they can investigate corrupt banks and get the directors prosecuted. The message they have sent is that you can steal as much as you want, but as long as you can convince the public to invest $25 billion naira in your company all will be well. There are many more direct ways of dealing with corruption and they work quite well.

How about we recapitalize/consolidate the Yahoo-Yahoo industry so we can stamp our their rampant fraud?

@

To keep reform ongoing, the CBN could consider to set a new upper limit, such as 100billion,  for the more progressive banks to distinguish themselves. Talk about learning from the lessons of past reforms.

lifexpress:

To keep reform ongoing, the CBN could consider to set a new upper limit, such as 100billion, for the more progressive banks to distinguish themselves. Talk about learning from the lessons of past reforms.

What actually were the requirements that the banks had to meet. We recently opened a Euro account with UBA and they dare to ask a 1% commission on all transactions. This is horrificly high by international standards, unfortunately there is little alternative.

@seun. your arguments are wrong. the banks were too many and many were marginal players. a lot of these banks were 'cesspit' of corruptions and insider tradings.

capitalization and other ratios are calculated by formulars and the more they are the better business a bank can do. take for example, there is a ratio between the maximum u can lend when compared with ur shareholder's fund. and stop comparing websites to banks. man, if nairaland goes down today, only your members will cry (if they will really do) and if u r very emotional, you could shoot a neighbor's dog. but banks going down have different implications. a bad bank dying could kill an health bank that is exposed to it. i am a banker and i know what am telling you. at least for a website, they are are standards (w3 standards, xhtml, css, etc) that you try to comply with that don't make sense to soludo himself. don't ever compare apples to oranges.

Seun:

And now the CBN is calling them "failed banks". Is it not the CBN that caused them to fail by asking them to raise money that they don't really need to run their businesses?

CBN didn't force them to fail. They had 18 good months to either raise money or merge or do both but their managements were too inept to do anything. Their arses should be fried!

consolidation has done well for the market.

As I said earlier, corruption should be dealt with by EFCC investigation and not consolidation.

dejiolowe: @seun. your arguments are wrong. the banks were too many

I don't remember customers complaining that banks were too many. Customers like to have choice. The only people complaining about that were the big banks who were not interested in competition from the smaller new generation banks kicking their colective butts.

dejiolowe: consolidation has done well for the market.

Well as a customer, I am unhappy about consolidation. Primarily because a progressive bank like STB has been forced to merge with a retrogressive bank like UBA which I have sworn never to patronize. Now I have no choice.

The employees (including many capable Hnd olders) that are out of jobs are also unhappy about the consolidation because they are now jobless. Those that remain are happy because their jobs are more secure following the exit of their colleagues.

The customers, creditors and investors in the "failed" banks are also unhappy because they have lost everything. Those in the "successful" banks are happy because they now have less competition to bother about, QED.

Charles Soludo is happy because the "reforms" have made him the most famous CBN director or all time. His face is in the news because he has taken "bold" steps (on behalf of the banks) and somehow the industry has managed not to fall apart.

If consolidation is so good, why don't we go one step further and consolidate the 25 banks into one powerful bank of international standard? We'll call it CBN and Soludo will be the chairman.

In summary, I am convinced that there is a lot of insincerity in this entire process. A lot of people are supporting consolidation because they have been convinced by high-sounding arguments by banking professionals who have been convinced by the CBN governor that this is what will lead them to the promised land.

I, personally, will have been more impressed by something simple like affordable and secure online payment. This "reform" - at least the consolidation aspect - to me is like running on a spot.

anyway about the CBN 25b

http://www.cenbank.org/FAQs/faqconsolidation.htm

experts believe the recapitalisation exercise is a good thing so i support it wholeheartedly!

i believe the people or majority of them at da CBN are experts in their field and are going along with trends in international economy
in a certain interview Soludo said a bank in south africa has a capital base greater than about 40 banks combined in nigeria!!! most of the bank in nigeria are not healthy!! simple
But i also believe some banks should be given community status for grassroots developement.

LoverBwoy:

anyway about the CBN 25b

http://www.cenbank.org/FAQs/faqconsolidation.htm

experts believe the recapitalisation exercise is a good thing so i support it wholeheartedly!

i believe the people or majority of them at da CBN are experts in their field and are going along with trends in international economy
in a certain interview Soludo said a bank in south africa has a capital base greater than about 40 banks combined in nigeria!!! most of the bank in nigeria are not healthy!! simple
But i also believe some banks should be given community status for grassroots developement.

you are talking sence but those banks are too big to have community bank status. community banks are just like daily contribution banks or i can say "mega piggy bank" . an high school graduate can work in a community bank, all it takes  is alittle bit maths and at the end of the they still go to other big banks to deposit their money.

Thanks nferyn for this clip:
'What actually were the requirements that the banks had to meet. We recently opened a Euro account with UBA and they dare to ask a 1% commission on all transactions. This is horrificly high by international standards, unfortunately there is little alternative.'

Please click on the CBN icon below to view details but I truly agree that those charges are too high. I am hopeful that now UBA may no longer enjoy their unique status and the other 25 or so could offer you safe and reliable accounts.

I wish someone could really show me why this capitalization is a good thing. Everyone seems to know that it's a good thing but no-one is able to explain except by making authoritative statements or alluding to 'experts'. I believe that if I can't understand what you are saying after giving it much thought then it's probably nonsense. Maybe that is wrong here?

Thanks Seun for your worry,
But you recall how too many cooks do spoil the soup; in the banking system there were too many boys and girls, parents with crutches, grannies with guts and the likes all acting as the cooks in one pot. Millions of Nigerians lost money, many died fron crashes and collapsing of the banks, and Nigeria's worst public-relations blight called 419 became so succesful. Boy that was not so nice.
Using a financial equivalent of the famed OPTION-A4, now Soludo hands Obasanjo about twenty five clean-shaven cooks who look exactly the same and could perform so too! They'll likely cut and create our pot into such equal share for the good of all eaters or users.
You must know by now that God isn't going to do for you what you won't do for yourself.

“I see a world economy with no more than 10 to 20 mega-banks all over the world. I see national and cross-national mergers and acquisitions taking place on a massive scale. It will not be a world for marginal or fringe players,” he says, citing South African bank ABSA, which has an asset base larger than all of Nigerian commercial banks combined.
http://www.thebanker.com/news/fullstory.php/aid/2268/A_fragile_sector.html?

Charles Soludo dreams of a world in which we have only 20 mega-banks :-o. I don't think I like that kind of world very much.

The point is the banking sector was in need of honest regulation and someone has boldly provided one besides who said anything about not having more than 25 banks as long as they can meet the requirement?

Anyone wants to debate this one on one?