CBN grants new licences to 17 banks •As Akingbola seeks to stop sale of Intercontinental Bank

Wednesday, 01 June 2011

THE Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has granted new international banking licences to nine banks, national licenses to six others and regional licenses to two banks.

Those in the international category included the Access Bank; Diamond Bank; Fidelity Bank; FirstBank Plc; First City Monument Bank (FCMB) and Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank).

Others are Skye Bank; Zenith Bank and the United Bank for Africa (UBA).

Those who got the national banking license were Citi Bank; Ecobank Nigeria; Stanbic IBTC Standard Chartered ; Sterling Bank and Unity Bank, while Wema Bank and Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB) will play as regional banks.

It will be recalled that the apex bank stopped issuing universal banking licences last year and said it would enforce new minimum capital requirements for different categories of bank, in a bid to avoid a repeat of near collapse of several banks in 2009.

International banks require a minimum capital of N50 billion under the new regime, while national banks require minimum capital of N25 billion.

Regional banks, which can operate in only six to 12 of the 36 states of the federation, are required to have N10 billion.

Meanwhile, the CBN has said the rescued banks have until the end of September to reach recapitalisation deals with new investors or face liquidation.

The apex bank had, in 2009, injected N620 billion into nine banks deemed by auditors to have become so weakly capitalised that they posed a risk to the entire banking system in Nigeria.

Meanwhile, the former Managing Director of Intercontinental Bank Plc, Dr Erastus Akingbola and an erstwhile Executive Director of the bank, Bayo Dada, have secured an ex parte order from a Federal High Court in Lagos, presided over by Justice Okechukwu Okeke, stopping the planned sale of the bank to Access Bank.

The court equally restrained the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) from disposing or altering the shareholding structure of Intercontinental Bank in favour of Access Bank.

The court also restrained Intercontinental Bank and Access Bank from taking further step(s) on the purported memorandum of understanding (MoU) for business combinations signed by the two banks.

According to the judge, while ruling on the ex parte motion on Tuesday, the orders were to subsist, pending the hearing and determination of the suit filed by Akingbola and Dada.

The duo of Akingbola and Dada, in the fresh suit, was challenging the propriety of the MoU signed by Intercontinental Bank and Access Bank without recourse to them as shareholders of Intercontinental Bank.

The court had, after entertaining arguments from the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Onyebuchi Aniakor, restrained Access Bank, its agents, servants or privies from acquiring the shares or taking over the business operations of Intercontinental Bank and its assets, pursuant to the purported MoU
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