Dialectic Africa Analyst

Dear Africa Interested Professionals: I will make this one quick while leaving you enough reason not to comfortably believe the earnings provided to you by the management of FCMB.  1. FCMB has delayed its Q3 result on the basis of the result being audited and formally made an announcement to this effect on October 17.  Finally, it releases the delayed result that is actually unaudited like the other banks that had released their Q3 earnings over a month ago.  This is never a sign of honesty.  2. FCMB has struggled to generate pre-tax income of N7.1B over the first six months of the 2018 fiscal year.  Suddenly, over the period July 1 - September 30, 2018, FCMB tells the world it has generated pre-tax income of approximately  N7.7B.  In my experience covering African companies, most of the time in scenarios like this, I uncover an act of desperation and chicanery somewhere embedded within the financials to tell a better story than the reality of the day.  FCMB has not failed to di

Dear Africa Interested Professionals: Both banks that are the subject of this article, currently have CEOs that are sons of their owners/founders: Subomi Balogun for FCMB and Pascal Dozie for Diamond Bank.  Both CEOs were selected by their fathers and  groomed  for the top corporate office they now hold.     Ladi Balogun has been with FCMB for 18 years consecutively (post business school) and Uzoma Dozie has been with Diamond Bank for 20 years consecutively.  The former has been the CEO of FCMB for approximately 12 years and the latter has been the CEO of Diamond Bank for four years.  Now lets get down to the crux of the matter.  I have always been against the running of companies in Africa by children of the owners and/or founders.  This is not driven by any inherent form of incompetency; but, the bleak expectation for shareholders when  family interests are pitted against shareholder interests  as they often are on an almost daily basis in companies of this nature and i