Crisis forces bank’s postponement of new board’s inauguration

*Declares zero dividends to members

Ultimate Microfinance Bank, Ipaja, Lagos, has postponed the inauguration of new board members due to internal crises rocking the bank.

The bank also declared zero dividends to its shareholders as a result of alleged fraud committed by the former managing director of the bank.

According to one of the shareholders at the Annual General Meeting, Mr. Daniel Jimoh, who said he feels cheated by the bank management for not choosing him as a member of the board, said there is no point going ahead with the inauguration.

The shareholders thus agreed to extend the tenure of the current board by three months to resolve the crises.

Meanwhile, in his report and financial statements for the December 31st, 2016, Chairman of the Bank, Mr. Wale Odunayo said the bank declared 10k per share as dividend in 2013, 5k per share in 2014 and no dividend in 2015 financial year because of the loss from the fraud committed by former executive of the bank.

“Your bank cannot declare dividend this year, because we are yet to recover from the fraud perpetrated by some officials of the bank in conjunction with some customers earlier in the year under review.

“ We are still in the process of recovering over N40 million through the EFCC. To date, the sum of N20,389,664.00m has been recovered. The bank is still making efforts towards more recovery,” he said.

He said the bank’s authorized share capital remains N50m, while the paid up share capital as at 31st of December, 2016 was N29,622,539m leaving the sum of N20,377,461.00m yet to be subscribed.

Odunayo stated that other steps taken to sell the Bank’s shares towards increasing operating capital include adopting a policy that customers applying for certain categories of loan from the Bank must purchase a minimum of 10,000 units of shares.

“In this way additional shares are being sold and more shareholders are being added to the current list of shareholders. I still call on shareholders to purchase more shares”, he said.

The chairman however bemoaned the economic situation of the country as one of the factors that have impacted negatively on the running of the bank saying the recession impacted negatively on the cost of goods and services.

Esther Taiwo