Union Bank Acquisition: Tunde Lemo Speaks.

 

The Chairman of Titan Trust Bank, Mr Tunde Lemo has made further clarifications on the year-end acquisition of the 104-year-old Union Bank by the two-year-old Titan Trust Bank.

In a tersely worded message issued on Christmas Day, Lemo said that he is just a nominal shareholder of Titan Trust, but was made Board Chairman to provide lesdershio given his pedigree.

Here's the full text of his statement:

"Thank you very much for your messages of felicitation and congratulations on the proposed acquisition of UBN by my bank- Titan Trust Bank.

"I however need to make more clarifications on the ownership structure of Titan. The bank is 85% owned by Vinc Corporation- a foreign company. The local shareholders own the balance and shareholding is dispersed.

"My shareholding is therefore very tiny and insignificant. I am only providing leadership".

Titan trust Bank is owned by the TGI’s parent company, Vinc Corporation which is a conglomerate of 24 companies, out of which Chi Limited that was recently sold to Coca Cola for $1bn, is the most popular.

They are in almost every sector of the economy from Agric to Pharmaceuticals, FMCG to Trading and others.

Titan, which started operations late 2018, was their first foray into the financial services sector. They have the ambition of becoming a tier 1 bank within a maximum of 7 years and therefore were always going to pursue inorganic growth.

The desire of the Private Equity Companies that owned UBN to sell matched their appetite and intention hence the deal.

Industry analysts believe that this is probably the first deal within the banking industry that is arising out of such alignment of objectives rather than out of a need to rescue the target bank.

Nigerians are waiting eargly to see what they will do with the brand.

To achieve a Tier One growth in seven years, Titan will have to buy First Bank, and perhaps another Tier Two Bank like Fidelity Bank.