Fidelity Bank records 58% drop in profit

Fidelity Bank Plc on Wednesday said its pre-tax profit fell by 58 per cent to N9.03bn in the financial year ended December 2013, down from N21.34bn it made the previous year.

However, the mid-tier lender increased gross earnings to N126.9bn, up from N119.1bn in 2012, it said in a statement.

Fidelity Bank has proposed a dividend of 14k per share, which it will pay on May 2, down from 21k paid a year ago, but unchanged from the 14k paid in 2012 and 2011, according to data by Thomson Reuters.

Meanwhile, Diamond Bank Plc on Wednesday said it would seek shareholders’ approval to raise additional capital up to $750m or its naira equivalent at its general meeting on April 24.

In a notice to shareholders, the bank said a portion of the fresh capital would come from a rights issue to existing shareholders, without saying how much, Reuters reported.

In a related development, Fitch Ratings has also assigned Zenith Bank Plc’s Global Medium Term Note Programme a long-term rating of ‘B+’ with a recovery rating of ‘RR4’ and a short-term rating of ‘B’.

The recovery rating is in accordance with Fitch’s soft cap for Nigeria.

Fitch noted that there was no assurance that notes issued under the programme would be assigned a rating, or that the rating assigned to a specific issue under the programme would have the same rating as the rating assigned to the programme. 

-punch