Co-operative Bank chief executive Gideon Muriuki (left) and President Uhuru Kenyatta. FILE PHOTOS | NMG The families of Jomo Kenyatta and former Central Bank of Kenya Governor Philip Ndegwa and individual investors Baloobhai Patel and Gideon Muriuki, the Co-operative Bank chief executive, are among the top beneficiaries of the combined Sh17.1 billion dividends that Kenya’s listed banks are set to pay.
The Kenyattas are set to receive Sh326 million for their combined 13.2 percent stake in NCBA Group , which has proposed a payout of Sh1.5 per share.
The Ndegwas will earn Sh290 million on their 11.7 percent ownership in the same bank, which was created following the merger of the former NIC Group and CBA Group.
Mr Muriuki is set for a Sh102 million payout after Co-op Bank declared a dividend of Sh1 per share. Mr Patel will get Sh34 million for his 0.58 percent ownership in the same bank.
At Sh752 million, the combined dividends of the two families, Mr Muriuki and Mr Patel mark the second year in which the high-profile individual bank owners have raked in less than Sh1 billion.
The drop was occasioned by the absence of Equity Group’s chief executive, James Mwangi, from the list. Mr Mwangi used to earn Sh377 million – the largest dividend earned by an individual from a single stock – on his five percent stake in the bank in previous years.
Equity has, however, not paid a dividend for 2019 and 2020, citing the need to build capital resilience in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Bank owners have generally fared worse over the past two years when the institutions have slashed cash distributions by large margins in the wake of Covid-19, which has triggered a rise in costs associated with loan defaults.
The eight Nairobi Securities Exchange-listed banks that have published their results for the year ended December have proposed to pay a total dividend of Sh17.1 billion.
This represented a 45.8 percent drop compared to the Sh31.7 billion they paid for the previous year when the dividend cuts started after the country recorded its first coronavirus case in mid-March 2020.
In the past two financial years, banks have slashed their cash distribution by a cumulative Sh32.2 billion compared to a pre-pandemic peak of 2018 when they paid Sh40.5 billion.Equity made the deepest cut, skipping payouts in both 2019 and 2020 in what has saved it a total of Sh15 billion.The bank last paid a dividend of […]
