First Bank of Nigeria Plc has announced its intention to seek the approval of its shareholders towards its emergence as a holding company.
The bank in a statement on Monday, noted that it would hold a court-ordered Extraordinary General Meeting next month where shareholders of the bank would be expected to ratify its emergence as a holding company from the existing structure.
It noted that the EGM would culminate in the submission of an application to delist the shares of First Bank from the Nigerian Stock Exchange and the listing of FBN Holding shares on October 3, 2012.
The statement quoted the Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of the bank, Mr. Bisi Onasanya, as saying that the holding company structure was designed to enhance the Bank’s competitiveness, streamline and coordinate various operations across non-bank financial services, and further exploit opportunities for synergies between subsidiaries.
The new structure, he said, would also align the ownership and operation of the bank’s subsidiaries and businesses with the current regulatory requirements of the Central Bank of Nigeria issued under its 2010 regulations, which require the separation of commercial banking businesses from other financial services businesses.
The overall strategy of this, he said was to create an operating model that would profitably grow the bank’s presence in the market for commercial banking and non-banking financial services in order to achieve the aspiration to be the dominant financial services group in Sub-Saharan Africa.
He said, “There is the need to align and cluster similar or overlapping businesses under four broad “business groups†namely Commercial Banking, Investment Banking & Asset Management, Insurance and Other Financial Services.
“This will result in the creation of a corporate centre with responsibility for setting strategic direction, providing group-wide oversight and ensuring the leveraging of synergies across the group through the constitution of a governing board and committees at the group level to optimally align corporate governance and management rolesâ€ÂÂ.
According to him, in line with the new proposal, all ordinary shareholders of First Bank as at the terminal date would be migrated to FBN Holdings via a share-for-share exchange between the shareholders of FirstBank and FBN Holdings.
Source: Punch/Udeme Ekwere
