Shareholders of Standard Chartered Bank Ghana have earned dividends of ¢1.04 per share amounting to 20% of the banks’ profits making it one of the highest payouts in the industry so far.
The dividend payout was announced at the bank’s annual general meeting after the bank recorded a profit before tax of some ¢325.9 million Ghana cedi’s.
Chief Financial Officer of Standard Charted Bank, Kweku Nimfah Essuman said, “We are of the view that this is what we can give to our shareholders to appreciate the kind of sacrifice that they have made for us as a company. The dividend payout constitutes about 20 per cent of the income that we’ve made and it’s the next highest cost on our books.”
Meanwhile, the bank’s impairments shot up from GH¢9.5 million for the year 2017 to GH¢100.8 million in 2018.
On the back of this development, the CEO of the bank backed the regulator’s call for a financial court to help reclaim loans.
Mansa Nettey said ‘the environment is challenging but some of the cases with our debtors are in court.
However, some of these cases take long in court so I actually support the bank of Ghana Governors stance to set up a special court to deal with these issues so it something I support and laud the governor to push."
She also noted the bank will be leveraging digitization to expand and improve profitability.