Ecobank shareholders retain board

Investors of Ecobank Transnational Incoporated have retained the existing 12-person board, Mwambu Wanendeya, a spokesman for the bank, told reporters after an extraordinary general meeting in Lome, Togo.

While declining to comment further on the board, he said shareholders had approved a governance action plan following recommendations by Nigeria’s Securities and Exchange Commission.

“The vote on the governance action plan was unanimous,” said Wanendeya. Nigeria’s regulator investigated Ecobank after former Director of Finance Laurence Do Rego told the SEC in August that Chief Executive Officer Thierry Tanoh and former Chairman Kolapo Lawson planned to sell assets below market value. Both Tanoh and Lawson deny any wrongdoing.

At the meeting, shareholders voted to limit the maximum size of the board to 15 members and to ensure that no directors can serve more than nine years in total.

A motion to raise capital was rejected after getting the backing of 68 percent of shareholders, short of the 75 percent required, Wanendeya said.

South Africa’s Public Investment Corp., the biggest shareholder in Ecobank, said on March 1 that it wanted CEO Tanoh to resign immediately.

The CEO used “strange tactics” to stop Ecobank’s board meeting on Feb. 25 and continues to use the “Ecobank platform and shameless abuse of the judicial system of Togo to pursue what we believe to be his own political and personal interests,” Dan Matjila, the money manager’s Pretoria-based chief investment officer, said in a letter to Ecobank interim Chairman Andre Siaka.