Heritage bank now owns Enterprise Bank

Posted by Felix Okoli on Wednesday October 22, 2014 at 8:25:40:

More and more acquisitions are happening in Nigeria's banking industry and the latest one is on the purchase of Enterprise Bank by fast growing Nigerian bank called Heritage Bank.

Enterprise Bank was one of those Nigerian banks that were saved by AMCON after failing to meet CBN recapitalization and sanitization exercise during the tenure of Mallam Sanusi as CBN governor.

Enterprise bank was formed in 2011 after Spring bank was taken over by the CBN for failing to meet the industry wide audit made on banks. Spring bank was found to be wanting and so the bank's assets and liabilities had to be taken over in the interest of the public by the govt under an asset management company named AMCON.

Spring bank was formed in December 2005 by the merger of 5 existing commercial banks namely ACB International Bank Plc, Citizens International Bank Plc, Fountain Trust Bank Plc, Guardian Express Bank Plc, Omega Bank Plc and Trans International Bank Plc. Spring bank was formed in order for the banks to pull their capital together to meet the CBN's capital requirement of N25b capital during the tenure of Professor Chukwuma Soludo as CBN governor.

The assets of Enterprise bank was fully acquired by the Asset Management Company of Nigeria (AMCON) as at 2013 and by October 2014, reports have it that it has been fully sold to another bank named Heritage Bank PLC. Rumours had it that some other banks were also interested in acquiring the bank and this would have helped them grow their investment and have a wider customer base. I heard that Fidelity bank would also have grabbed the offer if Heritage bank did not meed the payment deadline.