Shareholders of Diamond bank plc have approved the raising up of the company’s share capital to N15 billion from N10 billion currently.
The bank intends to achieve this through the creation of additional N10 billion ordinary shares of 50 kobo each, ranking pari-passu in all respects with the existing ordinary shares of the company.
The shareholders also approved the raising of additional capital up to $750 million through the issuance of any form of debt and/or equity and/or any other instrument which may be appropriate to meet the bank’s capital requirements, to be undertaken by way of a rights issue and/or an offer for subscription with or without a preferential allotment, either locally or internationally and upon such terms and conditions as the directors may deem fit in the interest of the bank for purposes of enhancing the bank’s working capital and financing business development initiatives.
Speaking at the 22nd annual general meeting in Lagos, Alex Otti, group managing director, said, “We intend to use it to expand our business, shore up our capital adequacy so that we will be stronger; we can expand the way we have planed, a few branches that we must build and a few places that we want to be so that we can reach our customers, faster easier and better”.
The bank grew its profit after tax (PAT) for the 2012 financial year by over 250 per cent to N22.1 billion compared to loss position of N13.9 billion in 2011.
Profit before tax (PBT) of the bank also rose to N27.5 billion, indicating a complete turnaround from the loss before tax of N18.0 billion recorded in 2011.
The Group’s total asset base hit the one trillion mark for the first time in the company’s history as total asset stood at N1.2 trillion, up by over 47 percent from 2011 position of N796 billion.
Similarly, customer deposits inched towards the trillion naira mark, increasing by 51 percent to N910.2 billion compared to N603 billion in the previous year.
Alfred Ugochukwu Achebe, chairman of the bank attributed the profitability to significant write-offs the bank had to do in 2011 to clean up its books and reposition it. “Today, the result before us confirms that the steps we took in 2011 were in order”, he said.
HOPE MOSES-ASHIKE
