The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) on Wednesday said it would commence the sale of Keystone Bank in the second quarter of this year.
This came barely four months after the bad debt manager completed the sale of Enterprise Bank and Mainstreet Bank, two of the three nationalised banks.
The Chief Executive Officer, AMCON, Mr. Mustafa Chike-Obi, who made the disclosure in an exclusive interview with our correspondent in Lagos, said the February general elections had made the corporation to delay the sale of Keystone Bank till the second quarter of the year.
“Keystone Bank will be sold in due course. An election time is clearly not the best time to commence the sale of a bank. We will wait for the elections and allow the dust to settle. Sometime in the second quarter of the year, we will commence the sale of Keystone Bank,” he said.
AMCON had during the last quarter of 2014 completed the sale of Enterprise Bank and Mainstreet Bank to Heritage Bank and Skye Bank Plc, respectively for a combined sum of N181.1bn, after bidding processes that lasted for several months.
Heritage Bank won the bid to acquire Enterprise Bank for N56.1bn, while Skye Bank was announced as the winner for Mainstreet Bank with a bid of N125bn.
While Heritage Bank won the bid for Enterprise Bank, Fidelity Bank emerged the reserved bidder.
Cedar One Investment Partners Limited and Fidelity Bank emerged as the first and second reserve bidders respectively for Mainstreet Bank.
The Central Bank of Nigeria had in the wake of the 2009 banking crisis established AMCON to take off non-performing loans from the banks’ books.
The CBN had on August 5, 2011 revoked the operating licences of Afribank Plc, Spring Bank Plc and Bank PHB Plc, which it said did not show enough capacity and ability for recapitalisation.
In their place, the CBN, through the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, established three bridge banks and transferred the assets and liabilities of the affected banks to them.
Mainstreet Bank took over the assets and liabilities of Afribank; Keystone Bank assumed the assets and liabilities of Bank PHB; while Enterprise Bank took over Spring Bank.
Consequently, AMCON acquired from the NDIC the three bridge banks and injected N679bn into them to meet the minimum capital base of N25bn and the minimum capital adequacy ratio of 15 per cent.
Chike-Obi, however, told our correspondent on Wednesday that the CBN was keenly watching the banking sector to avoid a repeat of the 2009 crisis.
He said the Ministry of Finance, CBN and AMCON were not willing to bail out the banking sector the second time.
He, however, said that the bad debt manager would continue its aggressive loans recovery action this year.
The AMCON boss said, “We are always aggressively pursuing loan recovery. As time goes by, it becomes more and more a bigger part of our daily job. We will pursue it more aggressively. Again, we have close to 1,000 cases in court; those instituted by us and those instituted against us.
“There is a certain speed by which things can happen through the courts. Yet, we intend to collect everything that accrue to us and we will pursue it very vigorously.” – Punch.
