Jimoh Ibrahim’s company takes over Oceanic Bank Sao Tome

GLOBAL Fleet Group, a company owned by Mr Jimoh Ibra-him, at the weekend, in Sao Tome, took over a hundred per cent shareholding of Oceanic Bank, Sao Tome.

The bank was handed over to Jimoh Ibrahim as the new chairman in Sao Tome, at a board meeting on Friday.

Mr Ibrahim signed on behalf of his company, Global Fleet United Kingdom (UK), while the Managing Director of Oceanic Bank, Mr John Aboh, led eight subsidiaries of the bank to Sao Tome, to hand over the bank to Global Fleet.

The development witnessed first completed sales of a bank since the current reform of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) under Mallam Lamido Sanusi.

The bank was set up in 2008 and licensed by the Central Bank of Sao Tome to carry out banking business.

In its last financial statement, the bank, which made a loss of $600,000, had a contingency balance sheet of about 166.4 billion Dobras (Sao Tome currency).
Ibrahim, who said the bank would be repositioned and turn around to return back to profit, stressed that the takeover of the bank was strategic to Nigeria external relations between Sao Tome and the Federal Government of Nigeria.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Global Fleet, who had earlier in the year set up Energy Bank in Ghana, said the takeover of Oceanic Bank in Sao Tome was the second by Global Fleet Group in the first half of the year, adding that the group would require to acquire five banks before 2015, to enable it to compete with global economy in the next 10 years.

Although, Ibrahim did not disclose the amount he spent in acquiring the bank, investigation revealed that the transaction was paid for in the United States dollars.

It was further revealed that Ibrahim would be expected to inject another $25 million for the recapitali-sation of the bank after its board meeting in Sao Tome.
News