FirstRand Ltd, South Africa’s second-largest lender may still consider buying Nigeria’s Mainstreet Bank Ltd. or Keystone Bank Ltd. as growth in its home market slows.
The bank started offering services in January to Nigerian companies as part of a plan to increase profit outside its slowing home market.
“We are growing into commercial banking in Nigeria,” Sizwe Nxasana, chief executive officer of FirstRand, said in an interview. “It’s using our merchant banking license. We will scale it up.”
South Africa has entered an interest rate tightening cycle, which will put pressure on consumers, the bank said as it announced first-half results earlier this week.
Nxasana said last month he favored organic growth after three deals to buy assets in Zambia, Ghana and Nigeria failed in as many years.
Rand Merchant Bank, the investment banking unit that started operations in Nigeria a year ago, is working with the commercial division of FirstRand’s retail business to find corporate clients in Africa’s second largest economy.
Net income rose 24 percent to 8.84 billion rand ($815 million) in the six months through December, the Johannesburg-based company said in a statement, adding that 2012’s numbers were restated because of new accounting requirements. Earnings per share excluding one-time items climbed 21 percent to 1.59 rand.
The lender boosted its interim dividend by 40 percent to 77 cents per share.
