By Omoh Gabriel
The outgoing Group Managing Director of Union Bank PLC Mrs Funke Osibodu in her valedictory Media chat yesterday said that the Bank is now awash with money. She said that the bank has moved from N378 billion shareholders deficit to N190 billion positive shareholders fund making the bank strong again as she step down from the position of Managing Director tomorrow. A new group Managing Director will take over from her as from Thursday the 1st of November 2012.
Speaking to reporters in her office yesterday Mrs Funke Osibodu said that the bank has cleaned up its accounts and is now in good shape. She disclosed that the bank had close to N3 trillion accounts that were un-reconciled over the years but that the CBN appointed management have had nearly all those accounts reconciled leaving some millions yet to be reconciled.
She said that bad and non performing loans of the bank had been sold to Asset Management Company of Nigeria AMCON, while some of the non performing loans were written off others were renegotiated in order to clean up the books of the bank.
She said that the bank loan portfolio had gone down from somewhere around N700 billion to somewhere around N200 billion. She said the loan portfolio of the bank has shrunk and that the bank now has smaller loan portfolio and a clean balance sheet.
She said that the bank got over its liquidity problem within three months of assuming office. She said that the bank has set up a loan portfolio management unit to management loans given out by the bank.
The bank she said now has a liquidity ratio of 90 per cent which she said is far and well above the 20 per cent minimum required by the regulatory authority. She described the situation thus, “we are now swimming in money”. The money she said came in from the new capital brought in by the new investors and the non performing loans that were sold to AMCON.
On the shareholder structure she said that Union Global Partners Limited now owns 65 per cent share in the bank, Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) 20 per cent and existing shareholders 15 per cent.
