Investors avoid Skye Bank shares over financial status

The market value of Shares of embattled Skye Bank dropped at the close of trading on the floor of Nigerian Stock Exchange last Friday 8.42 per cent.

This latest drop is as a result of increased investors anxiety over the removal of its board and executive management by the Central Bank of Nigeria last week, and replacing them for incompetence.

The bank lost 8k to close at 87k per share. The bank’s shares had earlier on Monday depreciated by 9.5 per cent, forcing it to close at 95k per share.A breakdown of the activity chart on the Exchange showed that investors sold 21.59 million shares of Skye Bank valued at N18.79 million.

Skye Bank shares fell from N1.00 to close at N0.95 per share. The bank’s shares had suffered a 36 per cent value erosion year-to-date, falling by N1.50 to N0.95 per share and underperforming the NSE All-Share Index which has appreciated 1.26 per cent YTD.

Alhaji Rasheed Yussuf, immediate past President, Association of Stockbroking Houses of Nigeria (ASHON), said that the shares of the bank were on offer but nobody was buying. Yussuf implored the new management of the bank to map out strategies to assure and reassure shareholders and investors.

ALSO SEE:There is no need to panic, Skye Bank boss tells customers, shareholders

Last Monday, in light of the huge indebtedness, the Central Bank of Nigeria took over the management of Skye Bank, forcing the Chairman, Managing Director and other key management staff to resign. In the place of the chairman, Alhaji M. K. Ahmad was appointed the new chairman of the board while Mr. AdetokunboAbiru was appointed the new managing director of Skye Bank by the CBN.

Alarm bells went off when the bank issued a profit warning in the first quarter of 2016 and still failed to release its full year 2015 results before the end of second quarter of 2016.

To correct the anomalies in the bank, the CBN had several meetings with the management and board of Skye Bank as part of its strategy of close engagement whenever a bank’s financial or governance situation poses potential threats to the overall stability of the financial system.

The CBN said despite the expectation of the relevant regulators, market watchers, financial analysts and interested stakeholders, Skye Bank should have been doing much better, but what was evident was the opposite.