CBN sacks Skye Bank executive directors

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Monday sacked top executives of Skye Bank Nigeria Plc over capital adequacy issues.

 

Speaking with journalists at the CBN corporate head office in Lagos, the Governor of the CBN, Godwin Emefiele said informed the public of the decision of the apex bank to effect changes in key personnel on the board and management of Skye Bank Plc with immediate effect.

 

He explained that these changes relate to the Chairman, all Non-Executive Directors on the board as well as the Managing Director, Deputy Managing Director and the two longest-serving Executive Directors on the management team.

 

The CBN boss said, these proactive moves have become unavoidable in view of the persistent failure of Skye Bank to meet minimum thresholds in critical prudential and adequacy ratios, which has culminated in the bank’s permanent presence at the CBN Lending Window.

 

“In particular, Skye Bank’s liquidity and non-performing loan ratios have been below and above the required thresholds, respectively, for quite a while.

 

“To correct the anomalies in the bank, the CBN had several meetings with the management and board of Skye Bank as part of our strategy of close engagement whenever a bank’s financial or governance situation poses potential threats to the overall stability of our financial system.

 

“Despite the expectation of relevant regulators, market watchers, financial analysts and interested stakeholders that Skye Bank should be doing much better than it is right now, we have seen about the opposite in reality”

 

Specially, he said, to this effect, the Chairman of the Board, all other Non-Executive Directors, the Independent Director, the Managing Director, the Deputy Managing Director and two longest serving Executive Directors have voluntarily resigned their appointments with immediate effect. In their place, we have selected industry experts and people of high integrity whom we believe can turn the bank around. In this regard, we have selected Alahji Muktar K. Ahmad to be the new Chairman while Mr. Adetokunbo Abiru would be the new Managing Director.