We are restructuring says Stanbic IBTC

Stanbic IBTC, the Nigerian unit of the of South Africa’s Standard Bank Group has said its recent sack of workers is the result of a restructuring exercise taking place in the bank.

Bimbola Ashiru, the spokesperson for the bank, in an email response to NEXT’s enquiries, said, “As an organisation we undertake continuous staff performance reviews (more than once a year) one of which has just been completed and as a consequence thereof certain staff have left the organisation.”

Refusing to give the actual number of people who have been laid off, Mr. Ashiru, insisted, the numbers being talked about including the ones carried by NEXT in their story are “ grossly exaggerated,” adding, “Performance appraisals are a part of our people management practices and in line with the bank’s strategy of striving to drive performance and delivering optimum value to all of it’s stakeholders including it’s people, customers and shareholders.”

CBN’s audit

The global crisis and the recent cleansing by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), has seen many bank workers relieved of their duties, similar to what occurred in the run up to bank consolidation. At the time, there were redundancies as banks went into mergers, were acquired by others while others simply shut shop as they could not capital base to N25billion.

The CBN has carried out two major stress audit exercises. The first exercise involving 10 banks saw Oceanic Bank International Plc; Union Bank Plc; Intercontinental Bank Plc; Fin Bank Plc; and Afribank Plc, being declared the most stressed banks.

The development led to the sack of their former chief executives and their immediate replacements on August 14, by Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the CBN governor.

The other five banks, First Bank Plc; Diamond Bank Plc; Guaranty Trust Bank Plc; United Bank for Africa Plc; and Sterling Bank Plc were left off the hook.

At the last Monetary Policy Meeting, Mr. Sanusi disclosed that the CBN had concluded the audit of another 11 banks in the second round, but did not disclose the outcome of the findings.

Among those audited were Access Bank; BankPHB; Fidelity Bank; Zenith Bank: Ecobank, Spring Bank; Skye Bank; First City Monument Bank; Wema Bank; and Equatorial Trust Bank.

But there is speculation that the remaining three banks, StanbicIBTC, Standard Chartered Bank and CitiBank, will not be audited because of their foreign affiliation. This has already sparked controversy in the industry, with people saying this goes against the grain of equity and fair play.

However some analysts point out that because of their foreign affiliations, the three banks are likely to have minimal exposure to margin loans. This they say may explain why the CBN has chosen not to audit them.

Abdulahi Mohammed, spokesperson for the CBN, who refused to comment on why three banks were left out, noted, “The audit process is yet to run its course; and full disclosures would be made at the appropriate time.”

Defending CBN’s intervention and why the audits were not carried out at the same time, Mr. Sanusi, a few weeks ago said, “There were no political undertones. When we do examinations, we have on-site and off-site examinations.

Out of the total amount of money that the CBN gave as liquidity support to the banks under the expanded discount window between October and July, the five banks took 90 percent.

“At one time one of the banks had N180billion from the CBN, while another had N120billion. One of the banks wiped out 74 percent of it capital exposure within one year. It was clear that these banks were permanently at the discount window, and permanently unable to repay their exposure.

From the report the CBN had received, there was enough to decide that the earlier the move was made the better. These banks have been taking money from the CBN since October last year. 11 months was enough time for anybody to resolve its problems.”

Besides, he added, “The examinations were done jointly by the CBN and the NDIC, each bank had 10 examiners - five each from the CBN and NDIC. After, the reports were examined by the director of banking supervision of the CBN and the director of banking examination of the NDIC.

The banks and their representatives had the opportunity to discuss with each of these directors some of these findings. There was an interval where the executives of these banks were told what the findings were. The report came to [the] deputy director of the CBN, Lemo, who did a further quality check.

It was after that the report was presented to the governor of the CBN and the MD of NDIC. The Committee of governors of the CBN and the executive of the NDIC reviewed the report and agreed that these banks were in a grave situation, before the governor made a recommendation to the board of the CBN.”