Mike Adenuga, business mogul and non-executive director of Equitorial Trust Bank, who was removed in the wake of the recent reforms in the banking industry, is to be reinstated

The removal of Mike Adenuga as a non-executive director of  Equatorial Trust Bank by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, on October 2, after a special audit of the remaining 14 banks took many stakeholders by surprise. This was because of Adenuga’s mercurial profile as a highly revered business entrepreneur in Nigeria. But barely a month after his removal, reports emerging from the apex bank within the past two weeks indicate that the CBN is set to reinstate the business mogul to the board of the bank he holds controlling shares in.

Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, the CBN governor, is said to be favourably disposed to restoring Adenuga to the board of ETB following conscious efforts made by him to inject fresh capital into the bank. Newswatch gathered that CBN held a meeting with Adenuga and other stakeholders recently and endorsed their offer to recapitalise the bank with initial capital of $150 million. Again, the thinking within CBN is that the fresh funds injected by Adenuga would relieve the apex bank of the burden of having to inject public funds to bail out a private bank which it was not willing to do. ETB is not quoted on the stock exchange and it has very few shareholders with Adenuga holding majority stake.

Apart from the efforts by Adenuga to inject funds into the bank, what is said to have also convinced CBN to consider the case of Adenuga is the fact that there was no criminal infractions like insider loans and money laundering found against him unlike what was obtained in other banks whose managing directors were sacked. Even the preliminary investigations carried out by the new management on the bank also absolved Adenuga from any insider wrongdoings.

Although Sanusi is said to be against sole proprietorship as in the case of Adenuga and his bank, he has reasoned that restoring him to the board of the bank is a fair and professional decision to take since no criminal infractions that could affect the Nigerian economy was found against him. During the auditing of the bank by CBN examiners, their only case against the bank was basically on ownership structure which they argued compromised corporate governance. ETB is owned by Adenuga who also owns Globacom and Conoil, so the bank serves as the financial power house of both the mobile telecommunications giant and the oil marketing company.

Even the examiners’ report pointed out that the bank limited exposures to loans and advances and its total non-performing loan was put at N46 billion compared to over N200 billion incurred by many other banks that were affected by the CBN reform measures.

ETB was one of the three banks whose managing directors were sacked by the CBN in October after the final batch of auditing of banks by Sanusi was completed. The other banks hammered were Spring Bank and BankPHB while Wema Bank and Unity Bank were given uptil June next year to recapitalise.

Before then, Afribank, Union Bank, FinBank, Oceanic Bank and Intercontinental Bank faced the CBN hammer.

Although Adenuga is reported to be holding meetings with CBN officials both in Lagos and Abuja to work out an acceptable modalities on how to inject the fund, sources said after the recapitalisation of the bank, CBN would like the bank to diversify its shareholding base and would also be encouraged to either seek for more investors to inject additional capital or go into merger with another bank or be acquired.

Reported by Dike Onwuamaeze.