Skye Receives N100Bn from Central Bank

Skye Bank has received more than 100 billion naira in liquidity from the central bank since July 4 to shore up its operations, its new managing director said on Friday.

Tokunmbo Abiru told reporters that central bank staff had been working at the bank for two weeks to support the lender.

It would be recalled that The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday appointed a new board and management for Skye Bank Plc after it failed to sustain key liquidity and capital adequacy ratios.

The Governor of CBN, Godwin Emefiele, at its head office annex in Lagos, said the apex bank appointed new board and management to take over the affairs of the bank following the resignation of the Chairman, Chief Tunde Ayeni, and Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Timothy Ogunatayo.

It was also revealed that several key management staff of the bank had resigned in anticipation of the planned dissolution of the board and management by CBN, which has discreetly been working to remove directors of some commercial banks that have demonstrated a level of distress in the last few months.

Skye Bank had been in talks with shareholders and new investors to raise N30 billion ($150 million), but suspended plans for a rights issue last year due to weak market conditions.

Emefiele said the bank’s outgoing board and management had consistently failed to turn its fortunes despite regular warnings from the CBN.

In place of the outgoing board and management, Emefiele said the CBN has appointed Alhaji Mohamad K. Ahmad as the new Chairman, while Mr. Tokunbo Abiru is the new MD/CEO.

The governor explained that CBN had to remove all the non-executive directors and two longest-serving directors of Skye Bank and appointed new non Executive and Executive Directors and EDs in their place.

“The most important issues in banks are Non Performing Loans (NPL), Capital Adequacy Ratio (CAR) and liquidity situation. What we have since late 2014 to 2016 is that the prudential and adequacy ratio has been weakening. We thought it is not right for us to allow this to continue to the point that it gets irreversible. That is why we took this step to nip it in the bud. It has nothing to do with being in distress. We do not want the liquidity and adequacy ratio to worsen to the point that depositors’ fund gets into risk,” he explained.