Phtoto: Sun News Publishing

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Former Chairman Ecobank Transnational Incorporated, Chief Philip Asiodu has commended the management of the Group for engineering the rapid expansion of the ECOWAS and African economies over the past few years, stressing the development was the only way to bolster economic integration and development across the different sovereign nationalities in the continent.

Speaking at the launch of $2.5 billion cross border hybrid Offer of Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), Asiodu described the offer as an indication that the economies of African nations have recorded appreciable growths in recent times.

He explained that while it took the founding fathers of the bank spent over five years to raise the initial $35million with which ETI was established, the bank is currently going to raise about $2.5billion in just two months.
Chief Asiodu, who spoke at the media launch of ETI’s Hybrid offer in Lagos last week, noted the development could be largely attributed to the relative political stability in majority of African countries, a factor he said has had significant impact on the continent’s epochal economic growth of the past ten years.

The former Chief Economic adviser to President Olusegun Obasanjo, said the hybrid offer is coming at an opportune time of continental economic upswing, he called on Africans at home and in the Diaspora, especially the apostles of regional integration to buy into the offer because, according to him, “the opportunities in an enlarged, much more unified African market was so enormous that anyone who invests in it stands to multiply every dollar so invested.”

Meanwhile the Managing Director of Ecobank Nigeria Plc, Mr. Offong Ambah has described the ETI offer, as the first multi-level regional offer structured into Rights issue, Public Offer and Global Depository Receipts (GDR).

Mr. Ambah listed critical fundamentals that makes the ETI Offer a good buy for any discerning investor among which include; dividend payment in dollars, track record of good dividend payment, phenomenal capital gains since listing on the stock market in 2006 as well as a diversified investment portfolio as a result of multi-country operation.

ETI is the holding company of the Ecobank Group, the leading independent regional banking group in sub-Saharan Africa with a presence in 25 African countries. ETI was established as a regional bank holding company in 1985 with its head office in Lomé, Togo. It has grown to a full–service regional banking group with over 500 branches and offices and over 10,000 employees in west, central, east and southern Africa.

ETI’s expansion plan includes the opening of new subsidiaries and branches in other countries in Middle Africa as well as representative offices and international banking facilities in the major financial centres that have substantial trading and transaction links with Africa including London, Paris, Dubai and Beijing.