uniBank faults Bank of Ghana, set to challenge takeover

Managers of uniBank Ghana have given an indication to challenge the takeover of the indigenous bank by the Bank of Ghana (BoG).

BoG on Tuesday took over uniBank to save it from imminent collapse. It has since placed the bank under the administration of international audit firm KPMG to “rehabilitate and return the bank to regulatory compliance within a period of six months”.

The central bank explained bad governance by uniBank management among other factors including breach of cash reserve requirement and failure to comply with BoG’s directives over a period, caused the local bank to be declared insolvent.

But international news agency Reuters is reporting uniBank would seek to reverse the takeover.

It quoted officials of uniBank as saying the central bank did not meet the requirement to notify them before announcing the takeover.

“We intend to go for arbitration,” said Dominic Ayine, former deputy attorney general of Ghana who is also the legal adviser to uniBank.

The appointment of KPMG as administrators of uniBank came as a surprise to many Ghanaians who wondered how the bank that was purportedly taking over Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) a few weeks ago, suddenly got taken over by the central bank.