A combined team of bank examiners from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) Monday commenced the maiden examination on the operations of Keystone Bank Limited, Enterprise Bank Limited and Mainstreet Bank Limited, THISDAY gathered.

The three banks were created on August 14, last year through a bridging process, from the defunct Bank PHB, Spring Bank and Afribank.

THISDAY learnt that the examiners would be saddled with the task of making sure that the banks have been operating legally, ethically, and within the requirements of the apex bank since last year.

The examiners would also look into the general banking services and banking operations associated with the banks.

Director, Corporate Communications Department, CBN, Mr. Ugochukwu Okoroafor, confirmed this in a telephone chat with THISDAY.
“It is a routine examination. But the maiden one for the three bridged banks and it commences today,” he said.

Probing further on the modalities, Okoroafor added: “The CBN will lead the investigation at two of the banks- Keystone and Enterprise, while the NDIC will lead the team at Mainstreet.”

The AMCON boss also revealed 11 financial advisers had been shortlisted out of a total of 44 that expressed interest to work with AMCON on the evaluation of the worth of the banks and on how to best to sell them.

Responding to questions on the selection process, Chike-Obi said: “The process is that we asked for expression of interest and we received 44 expression of interest to act as our adviser. We have since shortlisted 11 and we have sent out a notice to the people who were shortlisted and also to those who were not shortlisted.

“The shortlisted parties will receive detailed Request for Proposal (RFP). In that proposal, we will specify exactly what we want them to do and we will ask them to give us their fees. It is based on the RFP results that we can pick the advisers. So, we are probably four to six weeks away from picking the advisers. But again, we want the process to be transparent, so that everybody understands.”

Source: Thisday/Obinna Chima