BPE Endorses Afribank's Offer
Storites by Uche Obike and Bisi Lawal
The Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) at the weekend declared full support for Afribank Nigeria Plc's Offers for Subscription of 2.500 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each at N6.80 per share.
A representative of the Director General of BPE, an Assistant Director/SA to Director General, Mallam Baba Mohammed who participated the Completion Board Meeting held last Friday assured that the BPE will continue to work in harmony with the management and board of Afribank Nigeria to ensure the success of the Afribank's Offer.
"We have no problem with the Offer and recently, the National Council on Privatisation (NCP) headed by His Excellency, the Vice President, Atiku Abubakar also requested and reiterated the role of public enterprises as implementing agency to work closely with Afribank Nigeria; that is the board and management to ensure the success of this Offer. And as you can see the BPE is represented on the board and that is why I am here today."
Explaining further on the being shares currently in the possession of the BPE, Mohammed said the BPE has decided to allow Afribank to first go to the market with its Offer before BPE could will go to the market for its own public offer.
According to him, BPE is interested in wider share ownership of Afribank Nigeria .
"What we are waiting for at the moment is for this offer to be completed and then thereafter, the Bureau of Public Enterprise will go to the market with its own Offer. That was what we agreed with the NCP and we are working closely with Afribank at the moment to ensure that their own Offer is successful," Mohammed.
Afribank International Limited (Merchant Bankers) and Union Merchant Bank Limited are joint issuing houses to the Offer which opens October 25, 2004 and closes November 22, 2004.
The purpose of Offer is to finance branch network expansion, upgrade the existing information technology and provide additional working capital for the bank's operations.
Meanwhile, the Afribank Nigeria has unveiled a strategic development programme that will enhance the productivity of its work force, accelerate the growth of profits and also enhance a steady increase in the contribution of the subsidiaries.
It is presently implementing its enterprise rejuvenation programme positioned to guarantee better returns from 2003/2004 financial year and onwards.
The bank said that its endofyear earnings as at March 31, 2004 have shown significant improvement and was expected to continue in subsequent years.
"This has been made possible by the improvements in the operation of the newly reengineered marketfacing directorates," it declared.
The bank's management, in conjunction with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) embarked on the transformation of the bank's operations to improve the quality of its customer service deliveries. The programme tagged the "New Enterprise Rejuvenation and Alignment Programme" (NEW ERA) saw the implementation of a marketfacing strategic business unit concept with services focused on improving the Bank's interface with customers and also its internal efficiency.
Following this restructuring, corporate banking, commercial banking, and consumer/retail banking are separate directorates with mandates to give full service to the high, middle and lower end of the financial services market. Marketing and managing customer relationships are the strategic directions of these business units.
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