Keystone Bank may sell off African subsidiaries

Indications are rife weekend that Keystone Bank Limited is already in advanced stages to sell its operations in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Uganda to focus more on its core business in Nigeria. The subsidiaries reportedly haven’t contributed significantly to the bank’s profit margin.
According to the bank’s CEO, Phillip Ikeazor, reason is to divest its operations in these countries as it lacks the funds to recapitalise them optimally, adding that the subsidiaries remain a drainpipe to the parent company. It recently returned to profit after years of negative turnovers.
The realty was unfolded when an audit of it Nigerian operations and its subsidiaries was carried out and it was deduced that its African subsidiaries had a high non-performing loan ratio.Keystone Nigeria returned to profitability last year with a modest income earning of N41.5 billion ($256 million), two years after the intervention of the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON), after failing to meet the local capital requirement.