NEWS JUST IN; BoG Merges Unibank, Royal Bank, Others

The Bank of Ghana has announced that it has taken over the management of some banks in the country because they have failed tom meet the minimum capital requirement.The affected banks are Royal Bank, Beige Bank, Sovereign Bank, The construction Bank and Unibank.

The banks have been put under new name Consolidate Banks. Government has committed 450 million cedis to support this banks.

This approach they say, is the best to help in collapse of these merged banks and as well to help in their operations going forward. Bank of Ghana believes this initiative is an initiative from government of Ghana to help stabilize these various banks to be capitalized in marketing strategy.

According to the Central Bank, many of these banks has over the period for a very long time refused to submit audited accounts of their banks, this he say, has created an avenue of the merging banks failure to meet the standard needed in bank operation.

Announcing the move, the governor of the Central Bank Ernest Addison noted: “Beige, Sovereign and Construction Banks obtained their licenses under false pretenses using fictitious and nonexistent capital”.

Recently, the Chief Executive Officer of BEIGE confirmed that The BEIGE Bank (TBB), its universal banking subsidiary, is on course to meeting the Bank of Ghana’s (BOG) GHS400 million minimum capital requirement for universal banks by the end of December 2018.

According to Mike Nyinaku, “We have a gap of less than GHc100 million of the expected stated capital position required by the Central Bank and we will definitely meet this before the year ends”.

He said: “It has been a difficult year for indigenous banks without a doubt and we know that anxiety amongst customers has led to some of them re-directing their businesses. Having said that we are happy about the faith our customers have had in us”.

However, governor the Bank Of Ghana appeal to the general public not to panic and as well run to these namely banks for their savings but rather sees this as an initiative by the Bank of Ghana to better affairs of the various banks.