(L-R) Mr Onyewuchi Asinobi, MD/CEO, CSCS; Mr Emmanuel Ekazoboh, interim administrator, NSE and Mr. Binus Yaroe, GM, listing and quotation at the Nigerian Stock Exchange meeting on capital market performance in Lagos, Nigeria.

The proposed merger between First Bank of Nigeria Plc and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), would have been signed and sealed but for some political interests and fears within the top echelon of First Bank of Nigeria Plc who were worried that the bank which had ran and consolidated a successful operations for over a century was about to be consumed by a new generation bank in the name of Ecobank, BusinessWorld can reveal. One significant merger the industry waited patiently to see happen but which could not materialise was the Ecobank/First Bank merger. The merger would have created one of the biggest banking institutions in Africa.
But in a first major statement on the deal since the merger talks hit the rock over a year ago, Mr. Kolapo Lawson, chairman of Ecobank Transnational Inc., disclosed that the merger talks between the two organizations actually reached an advanced stage before the sudden deadlock. “Our effort at merging with First Bank was very significant,” Lawson said. “In fact, we had reached a concrete stage in negotiations with a signed agreement but suddenly politics crept in somewhere along the line.”
According to him, “Some people feared that a new-generation bank Ecobank wanted to come and take over First Bank of more than a century old. The negotiation got stuck and unfortunately nothing has happened as yet.”
Investigations also revealed that there were those in First Bank that believed in the process of a successful merger between the two organisations. For instance, when Sanusi Lamido Sanusi became the managing director of the bank, he brought a lot of enthusiasm into the negotiations and was in the process of convincing the powers that be in First Bank on the gains of such unprecedented development when his appointment as the Central Bank of Nigeria’s governor was announced. Since then, the current management led by Bisi Onasanya has not shown the needed urge to conclude the negotiation.
Lawson, who is also the executive vice chairman of Lawsons Corporation Nigeria Limited, revealed that ETI decided to talk with First Bank on possible merger after the consolidation exercise because Ecobank had tried to acquire other banks that were willing to be part of the brand name but things did not work out. “What we discovered with these banks were not necessarily palatable to us because we are operating with truly international standards which we are not ready to compromise for the sake of merger and acquisition as well as the standards which the other banks have not been able to attain,” he said. “It was on this basis that subsequent negotiations broke down.”
While First Bank is unarguably the biggest Nigerian company to be quoted on the Nigerian Stock Exchange, it is also among the top five companies in revenue, shareholders’ funds, market capitalization and number of employees. Ecobank Transnational, on the other hand, occupies a commanding position in the banking sector in Africa.