Unity Bank is in talks to sell a minority stake to two foreign investors to help the Nigerian lender recapitalise, the chief executive said on Tuesday. Tomi Somefun told Reuters the two investors had completed due diligence in the mid-tier lender and a deal was expected to close this year. She did not name the investors.
She said the bank, which has been seeking to raise fresh funds or merge to shore up its capital base since 2015, aimed to raise a "significant" amount of funds this year to meet a regulatory 15 percent capital adequacy ratio. She did not give figures for the bank's current capital position or say how much would be raised, but said the central bank supported the recapitalisation.
The CEO said the bank has been talks with two foreign investors for more than a year. "They would hold significant interest but won't be majority investors," she said. "These investors came to Nigeria to do a due diligence on the bank and they were with us for a month," she said in an interview.
Somefun said Unity was restructuring its business to focus on retail banking and small businesses. She said the bank planned to relocate some branches to better serve customers. Nigeria has been recovering from its worst recession in 25 years, after a three-year plunge in the price of oil, the economy's main driver, which hurt banks that relied on the energy industry for business.
Oil prices have been slowly recovering in the past year or so. "We are already restructuring our business to focus on digital-led retail banking with the capital that we have," she said. "We have close to 800,000 active customers. We want to double that within the next year and have a minimum of 2 million in three-years," she added.
Unity's slipped 4.4 percent on Tuesday to 1.29 naira ($0.0042), having more than doubled so far this year.
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