Nedbank focusing on Southern Africa

South Africa-based bank, Nedbank, is mainly concentrating on the South African and Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) markets.

In an interview on SAfm’s Moneyweb radio programme last week, Nedbank incoming chief executive, Mike Brown, said: “We are primarily focused on South Africa and the SADC, where we have businesses and we think the biggest return for our shareholders is for us to continue to focus on those businesses . . .”

In 2008 Nedbank has teamed-up with pan-African bank, Ecobank, to form the Ecobank Nedbank Alliance. Together the two institutions have more than 1 000 branches in 33 countries.

Brown added that Nedbank is aware of the increasing importance of growth in the rest of Africa, and South Africa’s role as a gateway into Africa. “We continue to look selectively to expand in Africa, both organically and inorganically,” he said.

Business Week last week reported that Nedbank and Ecobank has registered with the Central Bank of Nigeria to investigate a possible purchase of one of Nigeria’s failed banks.

In 2009, the CBN did an audit of all Nigeria’s 25 banks and identified a number of institutions that were in a poor liquidity poistions with a large number of non-performing loans on their books.