13 Nigerian banks make Top 1000 World Banks ranking

Thirteen Nigerian banks have been listed among the Leading 1000 Global Banks as published by The Banker magazine of the Financial Times Group in its 2014 edition. The Nigerian banks that made the ranking based on Tier-1 capital are Zenith Bank, Guaranty Trust Bank, FirstBank, Access Bank, United Bank for Africa, Fidelity Bank and Ecobank Nigeria. Others are Skye Bank, First City Monument Bank, Diamond Bank, Stanbic IBTC Holdings, Standard Chartered Bank Nigeria and Union Bank of Nigeria.

The report, which was released weekend, said banks in the world, for the first time since the global financial crisis, returned profit of $920 billion which is 23 per cent more than their previous peak of $786 billion achieved in 2007 before the financial crisis.

The report, which listed 13 Nigerian banks that made the ranking, underlines Nigeria’s financial sector’s leading position in Africa as no other African country has up to 13 banks in the Top 1000 World listing of banks.

According to the report, Zenith Bank ranked top in Nigeria at 293 as Guaranty Trust is on number 415, FirstBank on number 424, Access Bank 532, United Bank for Africa ranked 539 and Fidelity 622.

The report said profit on capital of three Nigerian banks that are not foreign-owned subsidiaries increased. These are FirstBank, that has its profit on capital increased to 25.32 per cent from 25.13 per cent; Access Bank, from 21.19 per cent to 21.24 per cent and First City Monument Bank, 15.77 per cent from 15.07 per cent.

23% increase in profit

Editor of the magazine, Mr. Brain Caplen, noted that the 23 per cent increase in profit of global banks from 2007 “is a good news but the better news is that capital has also increased at a reasonable pace whereas assets have stayed flat. This means that returns on capital are only slightly improved but the hope is that this upturn is more sustainable than the last one.”

Caplen disclosed that a large proportion of the profit is from China— about 32 per cent of the total which is more than the next three highest profit countries of USA, Japan and Canada combined.

Source: http://www.vanguardngr.com