Patricia Ubaka
29 November 2007
Lagos — United Bank for Africa (UBA) Plc has consolidated its leadership position in the Nigerian financial services industry with the release of the Group's 2007 financial results yesterday after regulatory approvals from the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).
Size and profitability are often seen as strange bedfellows, but UBA has proved with these results that big can also be efficient.
Having recently become the most capitalised company on the NSE with a market capitalisation of N633 billion, these 2007 results show significant growth in all performance indices. UBA posted a healthy profit of N30 billion for full year ended September 30, 2007 to become the most profitable bank in Nigeria.
Scaling up its operations considerably in the last 12 months, UBA grew its total balance sheet size by 43 per cent from N1.15 trillion in 2006 to N1.64 trillion in 2007 thereby sustaining its position as the biggest financial services provider in Nigeria and West Africa. Gross earnings, which stood at N90.45 billion in 2006, rose to a new high of N109.5 billion in 2007, while profit after tax and exceptional item increased by 130 per cent from N12.8 billion in 2006 to N29.5 billion in 2007.
The bank's deposit base, a measure of the confidence levels in the market, grew from N762.6 billion to N972 billion, the highest ever in the industry.
To further underline its commitment to playing a key role in developing the Nigerian economy, UBA grew its aggregate credit to the domestic economy significantly by 192 per cent from N109.8 billion in 2006 to N320.4 billion in 2007. Apart from being one of the largest employers of labour in Nigeria with over 15,000 direct and indirect employees, UBA also has the highest number of customer accounts with over six million active customers across its 600 business offices spread all over Nigeria and other West African countries.
Commenting on the result, Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of UBA Group, Mr. Tony Elumelu, said the 2007 financial performance is an eloquent testimony to the expected synergies from the merger that occurred in 2005. "We are building an institution that will consistently create superior value for shareholders and as a long-term player, these results are very encouraging in our quest to build Africa's global bank from Nigeria," he said.
Pursuant to this often expressed aspiration, UBA now has presence in seven African countries, and with the recent establishment of UBA Capital (Europe) Ltd in London, the bank became the first sub-Saharan African bank to have dual presence in London and New York, where it is the only sub-Saharan African bank with regulatory presence. UBA Capital will provide a platform for the execution of transaction services for international institutional clients seeking to deal in African securities and the distribution of primary and secondary securities of African issuers.
At the retail level, UBA has been leading innovation towards multiplatform banking. Statistics from Interswitch, Nigeria's premier electronic transaction switching and payment processing company, show UBA as the industry leader in e-banking, processing in excess of 4 million card-based transactions monthly and deploying the largest network of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in Nigeria numbering at over 840 and growing. In recognition, UBA recently won the prestigious award of 'Bank with the largest e-banking footprint in Nigeria'.
UBA Group is the leading financial services institution in Nigeria and West Africa. It is a one-stop-shop for financial products and services encompassing subsidiaries within the Group that are leaders in their various sub-sectors; Insurance, Investment Banking & Capital Markets, Pensions, Trustees, Custodian and Asset Management.
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