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No Nigerian bank among top 290 globally – Report

By BusinessNews Staff on July 8, 2014

A new report has revealed that no Nigerian bank is among the top 290 banks in the world.

The report, however, showed that 13 of the banks operating in the country were among the top 1,000 in the world.

The report, titled: ‘Top 1000 World Banks’, is an annual publication of The Banker, a journal of the Financial Times Group of London.

According to the report, Zenith Bank is the top Nigerian bank at 293; Guaranty Trust Bank was rated at 415; First Bank of Nigeria, 424; Access Bank, 532; United Bank for Africa, 539; and Fidelity Bank, 622.

Other banks in the country that made the list are Ecobank Nigeria, Skye Bank, First City Monument Bank, Diamond Bank, Stanbic IBTC Holdings, Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria and Union Bank of Nigeria.

A statement by the Country Representative, The Banker, Mr. Kunle Ogedengbe, said the ranking of the 13 Nigerian banks on the list was based on their Tier-1 capital.

The statement quoted him as saying, “Profit on capital of three Nigerian banks that are not foreign-owned subsidiaries increased. These are First Bank that has its profit on capital increasing to 25.32 per cent from 25.13 per cent; Access Bank, from 21.19 per cent to 21.24 per cent; and First City Monument Bank, 15.77 per cent from 15.07 per cent.”

Ogedegbe noted that no other African country had up to 13 banks in the top 1,000 world banks.

He said for the second consecutive year, 13 Nigerian banks made the list of top 1,000 banks worldwide, noting that banks in the world returned a profit of $920bn for the first time since the global financial crisis.

This figure, he explained, represented a 23 per cent increase over the $786bn profit achieved in 2007 before the financial crisis.

The Editor, The Banker, Mr. Brain Caplen, said the 23 per cent increase in profit of the global banks from 2007 “is good news but the better news is that capital has also increased at a reasonable pace whereas assets have stayed flat.”

“This means that returns on capital are only slightly improved but the hope is that this upturn is more sustainable than the last one,” he added.

Caplen observed that a large proportion of the profit was from China, about 32 per cent of the total, which was more than the combined profits of the next three highest countries, the United States, Japan and Canada.

Africa has 31 banks in the top 1,000 global banks with Nigeria’s top 13 representing 41.94 per cent.

The 31 African banks in the ranking are from nine countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Egypt, Angola, Gabon, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco and Togo.

The Senior Editor of the magazine, Philip Alexander, stressed that globally, banks in the 2014 ranking “are stronger than ever as the level of capital held by banks in this ranking continues to accelerate, with the minimum Tier 1 capital required to enter the Top 1000 World Banks now fast approaching $400m. This has almost doubled since the 2005 ranking.”

The Banker, which is regarded as the most influential news publication in the world, is a global financial intelligence magazine published since 1926.

[Punch]

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