Bank Bust: 80% of CBG staff would lose jobs – Joe Jackson

Financial Analyst Joe Jackson has predicted up to 80 per cent job losses as a result of the collapse of some five local banks in the past week.

Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited was recently formed by the Bank of Ghana (BoG) when it fused together five struggling local banks, including The Beige Bank, Sovereign Bank, The Royal Bank, uniBank and The Construction Bank.

Prior to this, Capital Bank and UT Bank had been taken over by the central bank. The central bank has given all banks up to the end of 2018 to meet the new minimum capital requirement of GHS400 million.

The management of Consolidated Bank Ghana Limited (CBG) has written to all its staff notifying them of an impending assessment, which will determine whether the new bank will continue to need their services or not – after 60 days.

Mr Jackson believes the merger of the five banks means that only 20 per cent of staff in those banks will survive.

“That means the guy who is a cleaner and has a cleaning contract may have his child drop out of school. That means the person who was a security contract may have to lay off staff and all the inconveniences; and bear in mind [that] if Consolidated Bank has been capitalised, it has been capitalised with our money. If there is liquidity support, it is our money, we are the ones paying for that fallout and yet what do we hear? All manner of excuses and issues [and] we are not angry enough, we are not infuriated enough,” he told sit-in host Benjamin Akakpo on Class91.3FM’s Executive Breakfast Show on Thursday, 9 August 2018.

He said he was “outraged” by the development and insisted that the country develop a system where anyone appointed as a chairperson or director will be scared enough to ensure the right things are done.