Reuters
- Looking first at 9 bailed-out lenders
- Wants to increase size and retail banking focus
Nigeria's Diamond Bank said on Thursday it was considering buying one of the nine lenders rescued in a $4 billion bailout last year.
Diamond, a mid-tier bank, said it wanted to acquire or merge with another local bank between 2011 and 2012 to increase its size and its retail banking focus.
"A number of banks are available for acquisition with focus on the immediately available CBN-supported banks," Diamond said in a presentation on its website.
The central bank bailed out nine banks last year that were deemed so weakly capitalised that they posed a systemic risk to sub-Saharan Africa's second-largest economy. The regulator wants new investors to recapitalise them.
Diamond said it would also consider acquisition options other than the nine rescued lenders.
The bank, which has foreign operations in the Republic of Benin, said it would also explore a pan-African expansion plan between 2012 and 2014 in Togo, Senegal and Ivory Coast.
Diamond has increased its number of branches to 210 from 177 last year.
On Tuesday Diamond posted a 6.2 billion naira pretax profit for the first half of this year, rebounding from a loss of 7.9 billion a year earlier. But gross earnings declined 22 percent in the period to 46.13 billion naira.
(For more Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say on the top issues, visit: af.reuters.com/ ) (Reporting by Chijioke Ohuocha; Editing by Randy Fabi and WIll Waterman)
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