NOVA Merchant Bank: We want to play active role in bridging Nigeria’s infrastructure gaps

Nath Ude, chief executive officer and managing director of NOVA Merchant Bank, says the bank will play an active role in bridging Nigeria’s infrastructural gaps by measuring business growth with impacts.

During its 4th annual general meeting (AGM) in Lagos, the bank declared N800 million as dividends for the shareholders.

In the 2020 financial year, NOVA posted a profit after tax increase of 112 percent to N3.49 billion from N1.65 billion in 2019 – despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking during a recent interview on CNBC Africa, Ude said NOVA would focus on bringing impacts to the table for customers for the rest of the year.

“For the second part of the year, I want to talk less about profitability… I really want to focus on the impact we should be bringing to the table as opposed to measuring our growth by PBT,” he said.

“Profit before tax (PBT) is very good, we have done good work, but honestly, we want to measure ourselves with impacts we are bringing to the table.

“As Merchant banks, we are supposed to bridge a huge gap, especially on the infrastructural side… there is a huge gap.

“Merchant banking is a marathon, identifying the gap existing in the economy and see how we can help.

“What we do. We identify infrastructural gaps – which we need to fund. These are areas that are long term in nature.

“We look at the manufacturing side – what are the things we need to manufacture, what are the things people need to do.

“I usually look at this to say, this is a huge opportunity for us as a nation and Merchant bank to step into our real cores and see how we become a huge partner in terms of bridging infrastructural gaps.”

On NOVA’s financing plan, the CEO said the company strategically took advantage of a bond to match funds with long term investment.

“We took huge advantage, a bond. We will use it to go into core long term infrastructural areas,” he added.

“It was actually N50 billion bond. We have done the first 10 billion.

“In the coming months, we are going to taking up second and third. It has helped us with planning and matching long term funds – with long term investment.

“It was a strategy for NOVA, and it is a style we want to adopt for the rest of the year. We will be doing a lot of fund matching.”