Nigeria: Margin Loans - Forum Blame Banks For Failing to Save Troubled Creditors

Lagos — Analysts over the weekend in Lagos blamed last Friday's sack of five bank managing directors and their executive management by the Governor of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on their inability to face the resultant failure of the margin loan operations by assisting creditors who later became bankrupt.

The CBN Governor, while announcing the sack of Sebastian Adigwe (Afribank Nigeria), Okey Nwosu (Finbank), Erastus Akingbola (Intercontinental Bank), Mrs. Cecilia Ibru (Ibru) and Bartholomew Bassey Ebong (Union Bank of Nigeria), blamed them for over-exposing their banks to the vagaries of stock market, as well as the oil and gas sectors of the economy. Both, according to those who know are very volatile, especially the oil and gas, due to fluctuations, not only in the international crude market, but the sharp decline in the value of the Naira against major currencies of the world. From N118/$ the Naira fell to between N145 and N180/$, just as the price of crude dropped a low of $30 per barrel from its height of $147 in the middle of last year.

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