WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2011-02-15 Time: 06:00:05 Posted By: News Poster
By Kingsley Ighomwenghian
Like a recurring decimal, senior operators in the nation’s banking industry, on Monday lamented the fast returning trend of debtors who rather than negotiate their facilities with banks have started resorting to smear campaigns to blackmail bank management.
This is coming less than two years after the Senate released a list of insider debtors of the 14 banks that failed to find suitors during the industry consolidation exercise, and another containing billionaire debtors as compiled by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), a few months later.
According to one industry source, the trend has been noticed in at least four banks already, with the group of big debtors “resorting to deploying the ‘mischievous tactic of using the media, both print and electronic, to embarrass and impugn the reputation of banks, rather than responsibly engage their creditor banks and negotiate their facilities.”
Our correspondent learnt that the debtors who go about as big men now cause the affected banks and their principal officers public embarrassment when demands for fulfilment of the debt obligations are made.
This, the source said, is common among the soft sell and on-line media.
“We have observed an emerging trend whereby debtors go beyond the cases in dispute to impugn on the integrity of banks and the officials to distract away from the demand being made on them. This is not helpful to banks willing to expand their credit operations to more credible debtors,” a top official of one of the banks stressed.
This negative development, another source lamented, has started and will continue to negatively affect genuine and credible businessmen and women who approach banks for loans to undertake their genuine activities.
Another source close to one of the banks expressed fears for the effect of the smear campaign on the industry, warning that his bank is considering selling the affected non-performing loans to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON) in the next round of bad loans purchase.
This, he reasoned, would enable his bank’s personnel concentrate more on their jobs.
“The impact of the actions of debtors presents real challenges not only to the perception of the banking industry but the economy at large. Under the new dispensation with AMCON, we may have to simply transfer these debts to AMCON and have them handle the cases as intended by the CBN,” he told Daily Independent.
The AMCON had on December 31, 2010, purchased loans valued at N2.5 trillion from 21 banks in exchange for three-year Zero Coupon Initial Consideration Bonds due on December 31, 2013.
The consideration bonds with a 10.125 per cent yield, which is expected to help banks report healthier balance sheets than they would have, enjoy sovereign guaranty, and is backed by the full faith and guaranty of the Federal Government.
The instrument was to have become tradable from January 31, 2011under AMCON’s issuance programme, but for what Mustafa Chike-Obi, chief executive of corporation termed “procedural issues.”
“We are seeking some waivers from the Ministry of Finance… so we have pushed it back to Feb. 28,” he was reported as saying a fortnight ago, adding however that AMCON’s target to absorb the industry’s bad loans by the end of March is still on track, just as the resolution of the industry crisis by June end.
AMCON, he said, is seeking Finance Ministry and Debt Management Office waivers to enable it issue tradeable bonds as a new company, in addition to a much needed exemption from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registration fees.
Several calls to the mobile phone of CBN officials were unanswered. When contacted however, Uju Ogubunka, Registrar/Chief Executive of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN) said on phone that the affected banks have not made any official report to it.
Original date published: 14 February 2011
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201102150526.html?viewall=1