National Daily

… To increase share capital

INTERCONTINENTAL Bank Plc's shareholders are expected to approve the creation of additional shares. In the notice of the nineteenth Annual General Meeting, AGM already served to shareholders, the bank is seeking the nod of owners to create additional 3.5 billion ordinary shares which will push the company's ordinary shares from 21billion to 24.5billion Ordinary Shares of 50 kobo each and 1.5 billion Preference Shares of 50 kobo each. This will increase the Authorised Share Capital to N13 billion from N11.25billion.

The shareholders are also expected to ratify the change of the bank's financial year end from February to December in accordance with the directive of the Central Bank of Nigeria that all banks must end their financial by December of each year.
Intercontinental Bank has one of the largest shareholders base in the nation's banking industry. A source at the bank's Registrars put the number of Nigerians holding shares in the bank to over 300,000. In spite of this the bank has continued to dole out impressive dividend to shareholders.

The Bank is proposing a total dividend of N13.5billion for the 2007/2008 year. This is made up of the N6.3 billion paid to the investors as interim dividend last September and the N7.2billion, the bank is proposing to pay as final dividend payout to its shareholders this month.

This translates to 75 kobo total dividend per share for the year up from 60 kobo paid last financial year. The increased dividend which is the fallout from the sterling performance of the bank came at the backdrop of expanded issued and fully paid shares of the bank.

The bank paid N574 million as total dividend in 2001 and paid N1 billion in 2002. The bank's dividend payout rose to N1.4 billion in 2003 climbing to N1.6 billion in 2005. Then shareholders enjoyed a sharp increment in dividend payout of N4.2 billion 2006 and N9.5 billion last year.
This is indicative of the bank's management capacity to turn its growing share-holders funds into profitability and higher returns on investment.

With this development market watchers believe the bank's global intent of being the number one in Nigeria, among top 500 in Africa and top 500 in the world by 2010 is realizable owing to the massive customer and investor support that the Intercontinental Bank brand is attracting in Nigeria and abroad.

Intercontinental bank recently embarked upon a strategic repositioning drive to dominate retail markets across the country, leveraging on its strong corporate finance business and massive market response to the bank's consistent delivery on its brand promises to make customers happy with excellent banking services.