Wema Bank Rocked By Crisis Over ‘Moves’ To Hire New CEO

A major crisis has reportedly engulfed Wema Bank Plc over who takes over from Mr Ademola Adebise, the current Chief Executive Officer (CEO), who is allegedly being forced to retire by the board of the financial institution.

It was gathered that the crisis may sink the financial institution if nothing is done to resolve it urgently.

Adebise, whose first tenure expires in October, having made the substantive MD/CEO of Wema Bank on October 1, 2018, has been served notice of retirement from the bank.

“There is serious infighting among the top echelon of the bank as different camps scheme to take over the leadership of the commercial lender,” a source said.

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Thenewstable gathered that the Deputy Managing Director, Moruf Oseni is the likely successor of the outgoing CEO.

But sources revealed that the interests from the bank’s top shareholders might prevent Oseni from taking over as the next CEO of Wema Bank Plc which is jointly owned by various business groups.

Extracts from the 2021 financial year of the bank revealed that Neemtree Limited, SW8 Investment Limited, Petrotrab limited and Oduá Investment Company, hold substantial interest in the bank.

Neemtree Limited with Babatunde Kasali (current Chairman) & Abolande Metei-Okoh as representative have a holding of 10,835,509,443 or 28.09 per cent, while SW8 Investment Ltd with Adeyemi Adefarakan as a representative has 5,745,816,867 or 14.90 per cent holding of the bank.

Others are Petrotrab limited with 3,295,880,000 or 8.54 per cent shareholdings and Odu’a Investment, with 3,060,643,134 has Olusegun Adesegun as a representative on the board.

As of 2021, Kasali has 10,835,508,506,943 indirect holdings in Wema bank, while Abolanle Matel-Okoh has 1,750,000,000 and 10,833,506,943 direct and indirect holdings in the bank.

Abubakar Lawal in 2021 had 1,000,000 and 427,917,143 direct and indirect holdings; Olusegun with 3,060,643,134 and Adeyemi Adefarakan with 5,745,816,867 indirect holdings in 2021 respectively.

Other key holders include: Mr Ademola Adebise with 10,265 direct and 2,243,208 indirect; Mr. Adebode Adefioye with 6,988 direct holdings; Oluwole Ajimisinmi has 6,179,996 direct holdings and Emeka Obiagwu with 231,250 direct holdings in 2021.

Wema Bank’s performance under Adebise witnessed a significant improvement between 2018 and 2021 financial year.

The bank’s profit before tax grew significantly by 157.99 per cent to N12.38billion in 2021 from N4.8billion in 2018, while profit after tax increased by 168.35 per cent to N8.9billion in 2021 from N3.33billion reported in the 2018 financial year.

With the growth in profits, the bank for the first time in over a decade declared dividend payout to shareholders in 2018.

The growth in profit was driven by effective management of balance sheet as total assets increased from N488.8billion in 2018 to N1.18trillion reported in 2021.

As customers’ deposit hits N927.47billion in 2021 from N369.2billion in 2018, loans to customers moved from N252.19billion in 2018 to N418.86billion in 2021.