Centage Savings and Loans floats N105b private placement AFTER concluding its restructuring and repositioning exercise piloted by KPMG, its financial advisory company, which made its share capital to rise from N500 million to N3 billion, Centage Savings and Loans Limited has opened a private placement to raise additional N10.5 billion. Centage is offering 1.5 million ordinary shares of N1 each at N3 per share and another N6 billion debenture stock from a selected group of prospective investors. As a folIow-up to the re-structuring exercise, the bank has also embarked on a branch expansion programme, which yielded immediate results with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) giving approval for four additional branches to Centage. This brought the bank's network of branches to eight and more awaiting CBN approval. The Managing Director of the bank, Mr. Gabriel Johnson Ndukwe, said the bank's recapitalisation drive is in pursuit of the new goal and vision of the company, and also part of the strategic repositioning of the bank aimed at making it the number one mortgage bank in Africa, and to assist the Federal Government achieve the Vision 2020 and one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of making housing affordable for all. "Recapitalisation is a necessity for all categories of bank, and it doesn't matter whether CBN is demanding it or not. For us, we need a strong capital base to be able to achieve our goal of being the number one mortgage bank in Africa," he said. In line with this vision, the bank has also entered into strategic alliances with some foreign companies in China, Germany, London and America. The objective is to collaborate in schemes that can help source or develop much cheaper building materials, so that the cost of housing development can be drastically reduced and brought to a level of the average African. By this effort, Centage has won the sole franchise for the marketing of the African Sustainable House in Nigeria and the entire West Africa. The pre-cast house is a low-cost, German finished product approved by the United Nations for Third World countries. Ndukwe identified that Nigeria has a gap of 16 million units of housing as compared to other developed nations and that the challenge of his bank is to bridge this gap, hence the need for recapitalisation. "If it is
16 million in Nigeria, then adding other African countries, it could be over 50 million. So that's why we have to embark on recapitalisation to be able to raise the kind of capital we need to enable us meet our objectives," he said. Already, the company has established estates in five states of the country and is also negotiating a Public Private Partnership with the states through which it intends to take mortgage facilities to the rural populace. By Gbenga Agbana GUARDIAN October 29, 2008