Eric Nana Otoo, Managing Director of Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) The Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT) has vowed to maintain the local ownership of the five indigenous banks to benefit from its intervention.
The Agricultural Development Bank (ADB), National Investment Bank (NIB), OmniBank Ghana Limited / Bank Sahel Sahara Ghana (OmniBank / BSIC), Universal Merchant Bank (UMB) and Prudential Bank are the beneficiaries under the GAT intervention.
Subsequently, the Trust is to work with the beneficiary banks to develop holistic strategies to ensure that value is created in their operations before the end of the programme in the next five years.
GAT, is a special purpose vehicle to support solvent and well-run indigenous banks which were otherwise having difficulties meeting the new minimum capital requirement deadline by the Bank of Ghana to meet their obligations.
Speaking at the 2019 Pensions Strategy Conference organised by Axis Pensions Group, the Managing Director of Ghana Amalgamated Trust (GAT), Mr Eric Nana Otoo, said “one of the key things we are trying to do is that we would like to keep these indigenous banks locally owned. We will prefer that either the private placement goes to Ghanaians or even back to the original shareholders.
“If not, we will try and list them on our stock exchange so that everyday Ghanaians can actually own pieces of the GAT. We will be very prone to viable operating banks that hopefully will help us to compete with some of our foreign banks.”
The plan of GAT, he said, was to help the banks meet the capital requirement by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) and not to take over, hence the need for players in the pension industry to partner them in that regard.
“Our plan is not to take over the banks; the plan is to help them meet BoG requirement. We will position them well so that in five years’ time when we are leaving, we can leave behind viable, profitable growing banks that can compete with the foreign banks,” he said.
Overhauling
GAT, he said, had in place a team of bank experts who were doing an overall business review of the banks and that was helping to shape the plans after investing in the banks.
“We are formulating our plans around how we will improve governance for the local banks and what controls and changes we need to make.“We will look at management and see how we can strengthen it. If it […]
