The Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) has said there would be no more forbearance for financial institutions in face of the present financial crises rocking the nation.
Managing Director, AMCON, Mr Ahmed Kuru, during a visit to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Monday, stated that the financial institutions in the country need to stand up to task so that businesses do not survive on support.
“This is not a time for forbearance. It is the time for businesses to come back and operate properly. This is the time to put in proper corporate governance to show that businesses don’t survive on the basis of support but on the basis of the dynamics of those businesses,” he said.
He explained that the corporation, set out to buy non performing assets from financial institutions, still has high margin loan in proportion to the equities being managed.
“Unfortunately because of the deposition in some of the equities, there’s a wide gap that we must pray that the exchange picks up so that they close the gap,” he said.
While noting that the corporation has more than five trillion naira debt, he explained that AMCON was not created to respond to financial crises but to manage bad debt.
It will be recalled that AMCON used bonds to bail out 10 lenders and buy more than 12,000 loans from industries including aviation, gasoline marketing and manufacturing for about N1.8 trillion after the 2008-2009 oil price crash out of which AMCON had recovered 57 per cent of those assets at a rate of 1.07 times for what it paid for them.
