Blame IMF for UT, Capital takeovers - Analyst

A financial analyst, Jeff Afolabi, has said the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is behind GCB Bank’s takeover of the now defunct UT and Capital banks.

GCB Bank Limited, on Monday, 14 August 2017, took over transfers of all deposits and selected assets of UT Bank Ltd and Capital Bank Ltd as the two banks were struggling to operate financially.

A statement issued by the Bank of Ghana on Monday August 14 said: “The Bank of Ghana has approved a Purchase and Assumption transaction with GCB Bank Limited that transfers of all deposits and selected assets of UT Bank Ltd and Capital Bank Ltd to GCB Bank Ltd. The Bank of Ghana has revoked the licenses of UT Bank Ltd and Capital Bank Ltd. This action has become necessary due to severe impalement of their capital. The remaining assets and liabilities will be realised and settled respectively through a receivership process to be undertaken by Messers Vish Ashiagbor and Eric Nana Nipah of PricewaterhouseCoopers.

“The main offices and branches of UT Bank and Capital Bank will be under the control of GCB Bank and will be opened at 1 PM today for normal business transactions.”

But speaking on the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class91.3FM on Tuesday, 14 July 2017, Mr Afolabi said the IMF was behind the move.

He told show host Moro Awudu: “What is happening is that, we should all note that the government of the day has issues with IMF that need to be dealt with and at the backdrop of it, the IMF is pushing the government of the day to ensure that the financial system of our country is well protected and safeguarded, and so, if your financial institutions and financial sector need to be well protected and safeguarded, what it means is that if there are banks which are the backbone of the financial sector, not performing well, then you will have issues.

“So the IMF feels that if you want to meet our conditionalities, one of the key things that they proposed was that you need to have to secure your financial system and these two banks are ailing, so to say, and you can’t have a financial institution with such banks operating in there, so, I want to say and a lot of people haven’t paid key interest, that one of the key playing factors in this action that the Bank of Ghana took yesterday was as a pressure that was coming from IMF to make sure that the financial institutions and the financial sector is safeguarded. That is why this action was taken."