Oceanic Bank International, one of the nine banks rescued by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) last year, is among the 30 top companies listed by the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
The Index Committee of the NSE recently held its quarterly meeting to review and rebalance the NSE 30 and four Sectoral Indices recently. At the end of the assessment, Oceanic Bank came 30 tops. The NSE 30 Index includes companies in terms of market capitalisation and liquidity and is weighted by adjusting market capitalisation.
The NSE in a statement said: “We choose securities on the basis of average volume in the last three months as well as the market capitalisation.”
The NSE 30 is a price index that measures the returns on investments from the change in market value of the stocks in terms of capital appreciation and depreciation only.
How did Oceanic Bank brave the odds to get listed as one of the 30 top quoted companies within such a short time? John Aboh, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer, said the bank consciously embarked on a turnaround programme that has yielded the result that has triggered the up the ladder. The bank on October 29, 2010 made public its third quarter unaudited results for the nine months which ended on September 30, 2010. The result, according to Aboh, showed a significant improvement in Oceanic Bank’s bottom line over the comparative period in 2009.
This improvement, according to Aboh, was greatly boosted by some factors such as low cost of funds improved revenue – expense ratio and the write back of impairment losses on loans and advances. As at the end of the third quarter of last year, the Oceanic Bank group had written back N14.8 billion while cumulative recoveries as at September 30, was N111.4 billion.
Aboh also reported that within the last three quarters of 2010, the bank’s deposit book grew by 15 per cent to close at N626 billion. He said this is primarily due to sustained customer loyalty, the resilience of the Oceanic brand, excellent customer service as well as the effectiveness of its 375 branch network. During the period, Fitch Ratings also upgraded the bank’s individual rating from “F” TO “E”.
Sharing the bank’s outlook for the fourth quarter, Oyinkan Adewale, the Executive Director/Chief Financial Officer of the bank, said: “The bank will receive a major boost to her liquidity from AMCON and with the resolution of the insider-related NPLs, we expect a massive improvement in the bank’s NPL ratio from 69 per cent at the end of third quarter, to about 50 per cent and we look forward to deploying the proceeds to optimise our cost of funds”.
The bank’s management said they devised other means that had helped them come to the top. Such services include excellent e-services, growing micro enterprises, being punctual at the clearing house and staff motivation.
Meanwhile, the take-off of the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) has given a new lease of life to activities in the capital market.
In the first two trading days of the new year, following the take-off of AMCON and subsequent buying of toxic debts of banks, the latter’s stocks had witnessed a steady daily rise and these have had a positive effect on the market generally.