CBN Don’t Own Skye Bank – Chairman

The Chairman of Skye Bank Plc, Mr. M.K. Ahmad has revealed that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) did not take over the bank but only intervened to correct observed corporate governance issues under the old board.

The CBN recently appointed a new board with Ahmad as chairman. The apex bank also appointed Mr. Tokunbo Abiru as group managing director/chief executive officer of the bank.

Ahmad said the ownership of the bank remained in the hands of the shareholders, stressing that the  CBN does not own the bank and has not taken over the bank. He noted that CBN was fully behind the bank and would support it to fully stabilise.

He re-assured the bank’s stakeholders that the bank was not distressed but only had corporate governance issues under the old board. He said the bank’s fundamentals remain strong and that it remains one of Nigeria’s leading and retail banks.

 Also, the MD/CEO, Abiru, said the management team and the board would work to achieve value enhancement for shareholders, customers and other stakeholders by bringing the cost-income ratio to acceptable levels, improve the risk assets quality and work towards increasing the liquidity and capital adequacy of the bank.

Abiru described the reconstitution of the bank’s board as an intervention, saying the lender’s fundamentals are good and strong.

CBN governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, said the central bank took what he described as a proactive step in order to save the health of the bank from further deteriorating.

He said the CBN had several meetings with the management and board of Skye Bank as part of its strategy of close engagement whenever a bank’s financial or governance situation poses potential threats to the overall stability of the financial system.

Emefiele said despite the expectation of the relevant regulators, market watchers, financial analysts and interested stakeholders, Skye Bank should have been doing much better, but what was evident was the opposite.