The 7 Biggest Banks in Nigeria

…Ranking of Biggest, Bigger and Big Banks

By Economic Confidential

After the consolidation exercise in the banking sector in 2006, seven Nigeria’s banks have improved tremendously in their shareholders’ funds, branch networks and share values. While other banks still retain their position in meeting the minimum requirement of N25billion, two banks have their fortunes dwindles even below the mandatory requirement fixed by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).

In its analyses on the performances of Nigeria’s bank, the Economic Confidential (See table on this link: http://www.economicconfidential.com/dec08bankranking.htm) discovers that seven banks can actually be regarded as biggest in a sector where every player is rated big. The seven banks are top in the list of three basic criteria used in the assessment from authenticated annual reports and other verifiable indices.

In an environment where every bank claims to receive different awards largely from reciprocal media that traditionally reward patronage and occasionally from questionable institutions, attempts by the Economic Confidential magazine to collect data from some relevant institutions, through official channels including published reports were thwarted because of fears of misrepresentation and misconceptions on the facts and figures. Nevertheless the Nigeria’s Economic Magazine succeeded in getting undisputable figures on the positions of the banks as at the end of last year. The magazine relies on facts and figures that have been endorsed by the regulators in the sector especially the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and Nigeria Deposit Insurance Corporation (NDIC).

In the finding of the Economic Confidential, First Bank leads all the bank in Shareholders funds with N307billion in 2007 from N58.9 billion in 2006. It is followed by Oceanic Bank in second position with shareholding fund of N210bn in 2007 from N36.5 billion in 2006, Intercontinental ranked 3rd with its N172 billion from N57billion in 2006. Other banks with huge shareholders’ fund as at the end of 2007 are United Bank for Africa N154bn from N47.6bn, Guaranty Trust Bank N142.98bn from N36billion, Zenith Bank N103bn from N95bn while Union Bank remains in the league of the biggest bank has its fortune dwindles to N94bn in 2007 from its 106bn in 2006.

On the bottom of the ladder in shareholding funds are FirstInland Bank whose fund reduced drastically from N26bn in 2006 to mere N20bn in 2007 and Sterling Bank Plc from N25bn in 2006 to N22.8bn in 2007. Others are Skye Bank Plc from N31bn in 2006 to N25bn in 2007, Access Bank Nig. Plc from N28bn in 2006 to N25.5bn in 2007.

Leading with the large numbers of branches is United Bank for Africa with 545 branches followed by First Bank Plc with 434 branches, Union Bank 393, Oceanic Bank 288, Zenith Bank 272, Intercontinental Bank 243 and Afribank Nigeria plc 238 branches. The banks with fewer branch-offices are Nigeria International Bank Ltd 13 offices throughout the federation and Standard chartered Bank ltd which has only 10 branches with 100% foreign ownership.

One of the major indices adopted in the ranking of the biggest banks is their share values. Leading in this category is United Bank for Africa which share price is N49.50k as at December 2007 followed by Zenith N46.09k, First Bank N44.70k, Union Bank N43.06k, Intercontinental Bank N40.60k, Oceanic Bank N37.40k and Guaranty Trust Bank N34.63k. Those with low share values are Unity Bank plc N8.80k, Eco Bank Plc N7.95k and Sterling Bank N7.28k. Five banks which were not quoted as at the end of 2007 and without any share value are Equatorial Trust Bank, Nigeria International Bank, Spring Bank, Stanbic Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.

The Economic Confidential could not rely on other factors in rating the banks like asset base and credit-worthiness because of deliberate manipulation of figures and cooked up accounting processes by some of banks in high-tech connivance and conspiracy. While conducting the investigation, this magazine gathered that Central Bank of Nigeria and NDIC that were mooting the idea of introducing uniform financial year end for all the banks instead of different months, have chickened out from implementing the policy which was supposed to start next year. Only very few of the bank use December as Financial Year End.

The policy of uniform financial year ending, if implemented would have checked the immoral habit of banks of borrowing from one another to blow up their financial figures and paint rosy pictures of buoyancy when in fact they used borrowed funds. It has been discovered that on several occasions immediately auditors and regulators approved the said financial reports, the deliberately bloated financial figures crash as astronomical as when they were generated from the back door.

The Table of the ranking is accessible from this Link: http://www.economicconfidential.com/dec08bankranking.htm

Robot  # 1 | 04.12.2008 01:10

In an environment where every bank claims to receive different awards largely from reciprocal media that traditionally reward patronage and occasionally from questionable institutions, attempts by the Economic Confidential magazine to collect data from some relevant institutions, through official channels including published reports were thwarted because of fears of misrepresentation and misconceptions on the facts and figures. ...Read the full article.

aguabata  # 2 | 04.12.2008 05:22

A very fair comparison of strength of Nigerian banks, terrorism has reduced the ability of our thieving politicians to launder money abroad, they are now stuck with spreading the loot across our banks, it will take any half serious government two weeks to trace the origin of all accounts with an excess of 10million naira.

N.A.R.  # 3 | 04.12.2008 10:04

In the finding of the Economic Confidential, First Bank leads all the bank in Shareholders funds with N307billion in 2007 from N58.9 billion in 2006. It is followed by Oceanic Bank in second position with shareholding fund of N210bn in 2007 from N36.5 billion in 2006, Intercontinental ranked 3rd with its N172 billion from N57billion in 2006. Other banks with huge shareholders’ fund as at the end of 2007 are United Bank for Africa N154bn from N47.6bn, Guaranty Trust Bank N142.98bn from N36billion, Zenith Bank N103bn from N95bn while Union Bank remains in the league of the biggest bank has its fortune dwindles to N94bn in 2007 from its 106bn in 2006. It seems Nigerian banks are doing okay. :clap::clap: So the consolidation move was the right one. However from my laymans perspective, where the heck are these banks getting their shareholders money from? Firsk Bank increased its share base 6 times over??? going from 50billion to 300 billion in one year??? Even if they sold shares via an IPO is this really possible? LeCarre, where are you jare! :source:source

udokaamah  # 4 | 04.12.2008 11:32

Nigerian banks are still on a learning curve. Lending activities still border on eliticism. The ratio of credit compared to deposit is still very low; Long term credit facility is still unavailable; interest rate on loans and credit facility is still very high. Nigeria banks still take loans from the US Export-Import Bank to finance long term infrastructural development in Nigeria inspite of huge backlog of reported deposits. But the banks seem more keen to finance consumer related credit I want to see evidence of long term approach to investment practices. I want to see a departure from sub-prime lending practices and from short-term profit motives. This article merely rehases academic details provided by the banks themselves.