Nigeria’s Diamond Bank will divest majority of its shares in South Africa as the lender wants to focus more on local market.
The move by Diamond Bank ends the mid-tier lender’s 18-year push abroad.
Several Nigerian banks expanded abroad than a decade ago, encouraged by rising commodity prices and seeking capitalising on a growing middle class in the region. But prospects have dimmed with a sharp fall in commodity prices since mid-2014 that triggered currency crises in some markets and turned loans sour.
“After 18 years of building the Diamond Bank franchise in other markets in West Africa, the time has come to fully apply our resources to Nigeria,” Diamond Bank Chief Executive Uzoma Dozie said in a statement. It said it wanted to apply its resource to Nigeria to develop a profitable technology-driven retail banking business.
The bank said on Friday it had agreed to sell its operations in Benin, Togo, Cote d‘Ivoire and Senegal to a Cote d‘Ivoire-based financial services company Manzi Finances S.A. for 61 million euros.
Lolade Akinmurele
