Banking

NAIROBI (Capital Markets in Africa) – After agreeing to Kenya’s biggest banking merger in at least a decade, Commercial Bank of Africa Ltd. and NIC Group Plc, are ready to take on regional rivals that have outsized them until now. The combined entity will have assets of 415 billion shillings ($4.1 billion) — about double what they each hold individually in the country — catapulting it past Co-operative Bank of Kenya Ltd. as the East African nation’s third-largest…

KIGALI (Capital Markets in Africa) – Rwanda’s biggest lender is expanding into investment banking to win more business customers as competition for consumers intensifies. BK Group Plc’s Bank of Kigali will start its investment-banking unit in March, Chief Executive Officer Diane Karusisi said in an interview in the Rwandan capital. The lender also plans to start an insurance unit as it seeks to diversify earnings, she said. Rivalry in retail banking among the nation’s 11 commercial lenders is…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Zenith Bank Plc, Nigeria’s second-biggest lender, is increasing its focus on consumer lending as lower oil prices weigh on the economy, hurting its business customers. The Lagos-based bank is expecting to expand retail loans as a percentage of total credit to about 4 percent this year from less than 1 percent in 2018, Chief Executive Officer Peter Amangbo said in interview at the bank’s headquarters. It will achieve this by making…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) – Moody’s Investors Service Ltd. placed on review for downgrade Access Bank Plc’s ratings and an upgrade for Diamond Bank Plc’s ratings. The reviews are on Access Bank’s foreign-currency deposit ratings and long-term counter-party risk rating and assessment, among others, Moody’s said Tuesday in an emailed statement. Some of the ratings under review for an upgrade at Diamond include its Caa1 long-term deposit ratings and its Caa3 baseline credit assessment, it said….

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa)) – Absa Group Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Maria Ramos will step down after overseeing the split from Barclays Plc, an alliance blamed for the loss of retail market share at South Africa’s third-largest bank. The stock rallied the most among its Johannesburg-based peers on Tuesday in the wake of Ramos’s pending exit. Absa, once the nation’s largest mortgage lender, fell behind after Britain’s Barclays acquired control in 2005. Now that the U.K. bank has sold…

JOHANNESBURG (Capital Markets in Africa) – Ghana’s central bank unexpectedly cut its benchmark interest rate to a six-year low, bucking the worldwide trend toward tightening and pushing the local currency close to the weakest on record. The Bank of Ghana reduced the rate by 100 basis points to 16 percent, Governor Ernest Addison told reporters Monday in the capital, Accra. All eight economists surveyed by Bloomberg said the rate would be held. “The bank’s latest…

LAGOS (Capital Markets in Africa) –  Significant constraints on banks’ capacity and willingness to absorb potential increases in government financing needs in the event of a shock are intensifying government liquidity risks in Angola (B3 stable), Bahrain (B2 stable), Ghana (B3 stable), Kenya (B2 stable) and Lebanon (Caa1 stable) Moody’s Investors Service said in a report today. The report, “Sovereigns — Africa and Middle East, Domestic banking constraints intensify liquidity risks as global markets tighten”,…