First Bank Nigeria Sees Faster Growth Buoying More Lending
- CEO Adeduntan targeting improved revenue and profit this year
- Non-performing loans seen continuing ‘trend downward’
Pedestrians pass the entrance to the First Bank of Nigeria Plc head office in Lagos, Nigeria.
Photographer: George Osodi/Bloomberg
This article is for subscribers only.
Nigeria’s biggest bank by revenue expects lending to accelerate and bad debts to drop this year as growth in Africa’s largest economy picks up.
“The current macro environment is supportive of loan growth,” Adesola Adeduntan, the chief executive officer of FBN Holdings Plc’s First Bank of Nigeria, said in an interview in Lagos on Wednesday. After expanding less than 10 percent in 2017, growth in the company’s loan book will be “much better” than the second half of last year, when it already started showing signs of improvement, he said.