The Group CEO of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), Ade Adeyemi, said Nigeria is not only the pan-African bank’s biggest market. Instead, “Nigeria is our biggest opportunity,” he told business journalists during a virtual press conference that was held, yesterday, to introduce the company’s new Chairman, Alain Nkontchou.
Adeyemi’s clarification was in response to a particularly interesting question about the challenges facing Ecobank Nigeria and the likely effects of said challenges on overall group performance. According to him, ETI’s Anglophone West Africa (AWA) region is the biggest market, based on the latest earnings report for Q1 2020. A look at Ecobank’s challenges
Both the Group CEO and newly-appointed board Chairman acknowledged that ETI has been grappling with some challenges. The COVID-19 pandemic, for one, has been a major challenge facing the Pan-African bank. According to Mr Nkontchou, the pandemic has adversely affected some ETI customers, and by extension affected the bank.
He specifically noted that loan is a major challenge, as customers struggle to repay principal debts and interests. Note that this is currently a major issue across the Nigerian banking industry. A recent Nairametrics report talked about how 22 banks had to restructure as much as N7.8 trillion worth of loans just to prevent them from going bad.
Speaking further, the Chairman identified ETI’s Nigerian operation as another major challenge. According to him, “Nigeria has a difficult macro environment”. This is a situation that understandably affects many companies operating in the country, not just ETI. Focus on Ecobank Nigeria, ETI’s ‘biggest opportunity’
Earlier during the press conference, Nkontchou had answered a question about ETI’s plan to address the declining performance of its Nigerian unit. He began by admitting that ETI “has faced some major issues in Nigeria that have affected our legacy assets.” He then spoke about measures that have so far been taken to address these challenges, including the fact that ETI had raised some debt capital and built a resolution vehicle to address the issue of bad loans.
In the meantime, ETI will continue to prioritise Nigeria, Nkontchou said. According to him, this is important, especially so recovery efforts are being made in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. Overcoming COVID-19 by partnering the African Union
“We see the challenges and we are dealing with them as an organisation. But we also see the advantages,” said Group CEO Ade Adeyemi, in response to questions about how ETI is generally […]
