(L-R) Vance Querio, MD/CEO, Addax, discussing with Shehu Ladan, GMD, NNPC, at the Society of Petroleum Engineers, Nigeria Council 2010 Olobiri annual lecture and energy forum series in Lagos.

EMPLOYEES, depositors and shareholders of the rescued banks may be in for another round of trouble if the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) makes good its threat to de-licence the rescued banks and hand them over to the Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC) for liquidation.
In a tacit response to the caveat emptor published by some shareholder groups in some newspapers last week, a top CBN official revealed to BusinessWorld that the action of the shareholders may force the apex bank to declare the banks dead and deliver them to the waiting arms of the NDIC for further action.
According to the CBN official, “The caveat emptor is not going to change anything. It is not a legal document. The shareholders are just being desperate and whatever they are planning will never affect CBN’s plans. We have alternative strategy to address the issue in question. The strategy is to de-licence the banks and hand them over to the NDIC for liquidation. We believe that what the CBN has done now is the best for every stakeholder because if the banks are liquidated, the CBN will still recover the N620 billion it put in the banks, though it may not recover everything, while shareholders will lose everything and that will be bad for them. We are still hopeful that by the end of the third quarter everything would have been sorted out”.
Shareholders had last week warned the general public to stay away from the invitation by the CBN to buy any of the banks which were taken over last year as the development is still a subject matter of pending suits before a Federal High Court in Lagos. The caveat emptor signed by representatives of four shareholder groups listed four banks; Union Bank Plc, Afribank, Finbank and Intercontinental Bank as the banks in question. The other banks that were also taken over by CBN are Oceanic Bank, Bank PHB, Spring Bank and Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB). But ETB was later returned to its major shareholder, Mike Adenuga.
The CBN had indicated, prior to the constitution of the new executive management of the rescued banks that it would be offering the rescued banks to any willing investor who is ready to recapitalize them and manage them in line with its existing banking guidelines and regulations.
The issue of recapitalisation of the rescued banks has been the most sensitive since the sanitisation started few months ago even as the shareholders have continued to argue that the CBN cannot sell the banks because it does not own them. Banking trade union groups have battled their employees over this, to the extent that the presidency had to call a truce and handed the matter over to the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC).