By Udeme Ekwere with agency report

The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria has said it expects the five remaining Deposit Money Banks rescued by the Central Bank of Nigeria in 2009 to hold Extraordinary General Meetings on September 30, 2011, for shareholders to vote on their respective recapitalisation deals.

The CBN had given the banks a September 30 deadline to recapitalise or risk nationalisation.

The Managing Director, AMCON, Mr. Mustapha Chike-Obi, told Reuters on Tuesday that the shareholders of the rescued banks were expected to meet on that date to approve the recapitalisation deals the banks signed with investors.

The five banks, Intercontinental Bank Plc; Oceanic Bank International Plc; Finbank Plc; Union Bank of Nigeria Plc and Equitorial Trust Bank Limited, have signed agreements with investors, but the shareholders have yet to accept the deals.

Chike-Obi, however, expressed the hope that the shareholders would accept the deals.

He said that if the shareholders failed to accept the deals, the regulators would explore all possible avenues to ensure that the bank depositors, employees and the financial system were duly protected.

The AMCON boss said, “If they go to EGMs and decide to reject the deal, then it will be clear that those banks will not be able to recapitalise themselves and the regulators will need to step in. But I don’t expect them to do that.

“If it is clear that a bank cannot recapitalise on its own, then all options will have to be explored by the regulators. We will not allow depositors, employees or the financial system to suffer.”

Three of the eight rescued banks were nationalised earlier this month for failing to show an ability to recapitalise.

The banks, Bank PHB Plc; Spring Bank Plc; and Afribank Plc, were taken over by the Nigerian Deposit Insurance Corporation, in a move which the CBN said would draw a line under the country’s banking crisis

However, the other rescued bank, Unity Bank Plc, has already recapitalised.

The former banks’ assets have been transferred to three newly created ‘bridge banks,’ namely; Mainstreet Bank Limited, Keystone Bank Limited and Enterprise Bank Limited.

AMCON subsequently injected N679bn into the three banks.

Source: Punch