A lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School has predicted that seven more banks will follow Unibank which was taken over Tuesday.
Whilst not mentioning names, Dr. Lord Mensah said all banks which cannot meet the minimum capital requirement set by the central bank will be knocked off.
His comments come a day after the Bank of Ghana (BoG) announced that it had taken over Unibank and appointed auditing firm, KPMG as an Administrator.
The BoG in its statement announcing the takeover, accused management of Unibank of refusing to cooperate with the BoG and also failing to meet the minimum c apital adequacy ratio of 10%.
According to the statement, Unibank's CAR was actually in the negative.
Speaking to Joy News’ Mamavi Owusu Aboagye Wednesday, Dr. Mensah said he was certain Unibank will not be the last bank to be knocked off.
Dr. Lord Mensah
“…from now till December, we are going to see waves of measures, takeovers, and acquisitions over the months ahead,” he said.
He explained that the BoG will want to introduce some sanity into the banking space and once a bank cannot meet the reforms, BoG will take steps to have it taken over or merged with another bank.
“Once the regulator comes in and they want to introduce a new measure or a reform, we are looking at raising capital requirements, and once you are not well capitalized, you will be knocked of the space,” he stated.
The takeover of Unibank follows reports a few weeks ago that Unibank had taken over the Agricultural Development Bank (adb).
The BoG moved in quickly to discredit the report, stating that what had transpired was pledging of shares by some shareholders of adb to uniBank which would have made uniBank majority owner of adb.
This move had, however, not been sanctioned by the BoG, a rejoinder stated.
uniBank becomes the third bank to be knocked off the banking space in a year after UT Bank and Capital bank were swallowed by GCB Bank in August 2017.
Experts have, however, argued that uniBank may go back to its owners if the things are restored to normalcy.
Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com| Oswald K Azumah
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