HENATES

ZENITH BANK: TWO NEW DEPUTY CEOs AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Zenith Bank PLC has announced the appointment of two deputy managing directors and an executive director to its board. According to a notice signed by the bank's managing director Mr Peter Amangbo, the two DMDs are Ms Adaora Umeoji and Mr Ebenezer Onyeagwu while Ahmed Umar Shuaib comes aboard as an executive director. Their appointment was approved by the board of directors at a meeting held on October 19, Before her new assignment, Umeoji was executive director in charge of Abuja and Northern zone operations of Zenith bank. She holds Bsc in Sociology and an MBA with over 20 years of corporate banking experience especially in marketing, treasury operations, branch management and human relations. She is a member of the Nigerian Institute of Management and the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria.(CIBN). Onyeagwu, on the other hand, was executive director, international banking before his new job. A fellow of the In...

Nigeria's foremost blue chip quoted company, Nestlé Nigeria PLC, looks set to declare nothing or comparative peanuts as dividend this financial for the first time in years According to the figures for the nine months to September released recently, the company's distributable profit is running 97.2% down at N483.7m due to higher tax burden and more importantly, the heavy weight of foreign loans. Nestle Nigeria PLC had managed to cruise home with N5504.5m as profit before tax during the period but expiration of pioneer status led to the tax man taken much more as government share leaving shareholders with only N484.7m profit after tax. Nestle Nigeria 2016 tale of burdens did not start there though, because the prime factor that led to 73.6% drop in profit before tax was the superlative leap in cost of servicing debts to N21984.1m from only N4241.2m by September 2015. Although the growth in finance income was more phenomenal from N378.7m to N2118.8m; it could only cushion the...

Perhaps because of the prop offered by financial assets  revaluation since the dive in Naira exchange value, bank jobs are fairly stable in spite of recent astronomical increase in credit loss provisions by many banks. According the National Bureau of statistics (NBS) by quarter three of this year, 82470 were employed in the banking industry. This represents 4.97% increase on quarter two's 78563 thus arresting the 3.15% drop from 81122 in quarter one. Equally important was the fact that the 2016 quarter three figure was ahead of 2015 quarter three by 0.96% and 2014 quarter three by 1.99%. The high since 2014 though remains quarter four when the industry employed 84358 staff followed by quarter one 2015 with 83898. Thus, 2016  quarter three figure remains the third highest quarterly employment figure in the banking industry since 2014. The low within the period was 2014 quarter one's 70960 followed by 2015 quarter two's 76471 and quarter four's 79418. Also, in spi...

Between January and September this year Nigeria consumed about 46.4m litres of petrol daily, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) recently released figures. Even though the figures indicate 34.67m daily average, the actual is 46.4m litres daily because in error, the NBS applied 365 days instead of 273 days up to September to arrive at its daily average. In spite of this slight error though, it was obvious that each time Nigeria diverted so much to subsidise petrol, the benefit flowed more to Lagos state, Abuja and Oyo state residents. From the figures, Lagos state alone consumed 18.32% of the national 12655.2m litres between January and September this year. Its share was almost twice the 9.96% of national total consumed in Abuja and almost thrice the 6.66% consumed in Oyo state. In all, the top territories, aside from the above, in terms of percentage consumption were Ogun state (5.57%); Delta state (4.09%); Rivers (3.30%) and Kaduna state with 3.07%. Also amongst...

Recession? Well even in war time, there are companies that thrive and so Presco PLC is one company with head above today's turbulent waters in Nigeria. According to the nine months unaudited results released recently, core revenue grew at 48.4% to N11937.5m accompanied by a heartwarming 3.43% rise in cost of sale to N29460m. This gave birth to 73% increase in gross profit to N8991.5m with which to absorb blows from cost pressure. Yet it turned out that real pressure came only from 86.9% growth in distribution expenses to N166.7m although 36.7% decrease in other operating income to N78.4m tried to dampen vision. There was 35.1% increase in administration expenses to N2240m but this was not threatening since it was well behind both core revenue and gross profit growth. But more cheery news was to come. First gain on fair value for Presco PLC's biological assets rose by a handsome 97.6% to N4408.5m. This was paper profit no doubt, but it came as icing on good operating profit...

Unity Bank PLC is not directly threatened as such by the continuing downswing in the value of the Naira but more by the depression in the economy made more biting by Naira's fate. According to the nine months figures to September released recently what Unity Bank needs desperately is increased income because most streams are delivering less Over all gross income by September was down 28.5% to N35173.9m driven by 39% drop in mainstream interest income to N21150.6m; and 81.5% decrease in fee and commission to N1300.5m. Amongst the traditional income sources, only other operating income recorded 10.7% rise to N5085.1m. In fact, Naira value drop ended with an effective prop for Unity Bank as asset revaluation as a result of this chipped in N5472.9m compared to N1072.1m previously. Equally helpful was 91.7% drop in impairment provision to  just N144.6m but interest expense decrease by 19.4% to N11525m; that is far short of the interest income dive; did not quite help too. As for f...

Since the introduction of the inter bank foreign exchange market in June, the potential has existed for Nigerian group of companies with subsidiaries abroad to boost earnings with paper profits. These are profits that accrue in the course of consolidation of group accounts in reporting currencies other than originating currency or when such profit is due to asset revaluation. In the case of consolidation, currency value related profit can come from conversion of profit made abroad or from conversion of foreign asset values. In the case of profit earned abroad, that is normally not paper profit because it is already realised. It is the one from asset revaluation that constitutes paper profit. That is, profit recognisable for the period but that can only be realised if the asset revalued is sold. In view of the fact that paper profit is inherent and not realised yet, declaring any dividend from it could in fact jeopardise the liquidity position of the company since cash is the li...