Banking

LAGOS (Capital Martkets in Africa) – Nigeria’s Fidelity Bank Plc is seeking to boost customer numbers by 20% this year by pushing its digital channels and offering loans to low-income borrowers via their mobile phones. The bank hopes to increase its clients from 4.5 million in 2018 and expects return on equity to rise to 13% from 11.8%, Executive Director Gbolahan Joshua said in an interview. More than 150,000 customers have applied for digital loans since it started providing…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Godwin Emefiele looks set to get a second term as Nigeria’s central bank governor, which would make him the first person to do so in the 20 years since Africa’s biggest oil producer ended military rule. The 57-year-old former banking executive proved controversial in his first five years as monetary chief. Many analysts criticized his desire to keep a strong currency and curb imports, saying it deterred foreign investment and slowed Nigeria’s economic recovery…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Bob Diamond’s change in strategy to build Atlas Mara Ltd. into a pan-African lender are helping a rival Kenyan banker fulfill a long-held objective of expanding on the continent. The company founded by the former Barclays Plc chief executive officer in 2013 is exiting four of the seven African nations in which it operates in return for 6.3 percent of Nairobi-based Equity Group Holdings Plc. That gives James Mwangi, the CEO of Kenya’s biggest…

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Equity Group Holdings Plc expects to lend as much as 420 billion shillings ($4.2 billion) during the next five years through a venture with Kenya’s largest mobile-phone operator by targeting small businesses. The nation’s biggest lender by market value and Safaricom Plc said last month they agreed to collaborate on financial services for their combined base of more than 30 million customers, ending a nine-year-long rivalry. Safariom “will support us to…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – After years of work and millions of pounds spent in preparation for the U.K.’s withdrawal from the European Union, the delay to October and seemingly endless questions about the outcome are casting a cloud over bankers’ outlooks and taking the shine off the rise in shares this year. The sentiment was underlined on Friday when HSBC Holdings Plc’s Chief Financial Officer Ewen Stevenson warned that the uncertainty is plaguing consumer and business…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – A decision by the country’s ruling party to nationalize the central bank is based on ideology and a misunderstanding of what it does, according to the institution’s governor Lesetja Kganyago. The African National Congress decided at a conference in late 2017 to nationalize the South African Reserve Bank, which is one of a handful globally owned by private investors. The shareholders have no say over monetary policy decisions and the central…