Wigwe, Imoukhuede, and Access Bank: Beyond rumours and stories, By Simbo Olorunfemi

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Three, the announcement that Access Bank has entered a binding agreement to acquire National Bank of Kenya from KCB Group Plc, the second acquisition in Kenya, after that of Transnational Bank Limited in 2019. What the promoters of virtually all the banks that were licensed at the time did was to put together a list of prospective investors, who they reached out to, eventually settling for a number that enabled them to raise the capital, and ensuring that there were also a few men in the team with enough clout or profiles to help them in securing a licence. It was a group of carefully screened 42 investors in the case of Guaranty Trust Bank, with Fola Adeola and Tayo Aderinokun as the core promoters.

That was in 1997, and both the Chairman, Chief Dipo Farodoye, and the Managing Director, Mr Lateef Muse, were forced to leave the bank. In place of Chief Farodoye, Mr Ayo Oni, a former president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and well-respected chartered accountant, who was former managing partner of Ernst & Young, Osindero, Oni, Lasebikan was appointed as chairman of the Bank, serving in that position till 2004.

“The Bank was quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, which implied some minimum standards of governance.” Deciding on the acquisition of the shares was the easy part, raising the N1 billion needed for the acquisition was the next challenge. Between the two men, they had assets worth N200 million, but how to raise the balance was the hurdle. According to their accounts, they put together a list of investors, made up of friends and family, who helped with cash deposits and land, through which they eventually raised the funds with which they financed the acquisition.

Intercontinental Bank Plc, founded in 1989 and originally licensed as Nigerian Intercontinental Merchant Bank , was a merchant bank until 1999 when it made the crossover to commercial banking. In 2004, the Central Bank of Nigeria , under the leadership of Professor Charles Soludo, mandated all banks in the country to increase their minimum capital base from N1 billion to N25 billion within 18 months, with December, 2005 as deadline. That prompted a flurry of activities within the industry.

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