By Peter OBIORA InvestAdvocate
Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – The board of Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) will on Thursday March 06, 2014 meet to deliberate on its divestment from Enterprise Bank Limited.
Mustapha Chike-Obi, the managing director/chief executive officer (MD/CEO) of AMCON disclosed this in a telephone chat on Wednesday with InvestAdvocate.
‘’On March 06 the board of AMCON will meet to decide on this’’ he said
This is coming on the heels of enquires by InvestAdvocate on the preferred bidders for Enterprise Bank.
‘’The board will meet on March 06 to deliberate on this, we want to have a transparent process that’s the reason we handed it over to consultants to handle, we don’t want tomorrow for anybody to say we have given or sold the bank to our friends or family members’’ the AMCON chief said.
Chike-Obi said until the board meets nobody knows who the preferred bidder or bidders for Enterprise Bank would be, ‘’until then before we know those involved,’’ he said.
Nigeria’s asset management company last September sought for interested buyers willing to take up 100 percent stake of Enterprise Bank by requesting they submit their expressions of interest (EoIs) by September 20, 2013 and show evidence of financing capacity.
AMCON had in July 2013 announced the appointment of Citigroup and Vetiva Capital to manage its divestment from Enterprise Bank.
On August 05 2011 three banks whose operating licenses were revoked- former Spring Bank, Bank PHB and Afribank were taken over by central bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigeria deposit insurance corporation (NDIC) for failing to meet the September 30 deadline for rescued banks to recapitalise or be acquired. Thus, they became bridge banks and were subsequently named Enterprise Bank Limited, Keystone Bank Limited and Mainstreet Bank Limited respectively.
The bridged banks were thereafter, sold to AMCON on August 06, 2011and the asset management company injected a total of 679 billion naira into the banks, enabling them pay back the funds that CBN injected into them in 2009.
InvestAdvocate gathered that top on the list of bidders seeking to acquire a 100 percent stake in Enterprise Bank is Heritage Bank Limited.
