Shareholders of Ecobank Ghana have voted for the bank to transfer 190 million cedis from income surplus to stated capital to help the bank meet its minimum capital requirement of 400 million cedis by end of 2018.
By this, Ecobank has reached a capital requirement of 416 million cedis since its existing stated capital is at 226 million cedis.
Speaking at the AGM of the bank, the Managing Director of the bank, Dan Sackey stated that the bank currently has an excess capital of 16 million cedis.
“Ecobank Ghana, currently has a stated capital of GHS226 million and a total shareholder funds of one billion. To enable us meet this new requirement, without raising new capital, we will need to recapitalize our retained earnings, out of which dividends are normally are normally paid as stated capital,” he explained.
The bank, did not therefore declare any dividend for shareholders as directed by the Bank of Ghana this year, that no bank should pay dividend to help them meet the requirement.
Touching on the bank’s financials, Mr. Sackey stated that, despite the challenging environment, the bank recorded total revenue of 1.1 billion cedis, keeping the bank as a leader in revenue terms, even though the figure was lower by 7 percent compared to 2016.
“The slight drop in revenue was as a result of the declining interest rates environment driven in turn by the successful implementation of the TSA, impacting our net interest income,” he said.