Diamond Bank Presents 1st Quarter Report

Diamond Bank’s repositioning drive and the conclusion of its balance sheet clean-up has begun to yield profitable results as the bank announced a profit-before-tax of N7.5 billion for first quarter 2012.

In a press statement the Group Managing Director of the Bank, Dr. Alex Otti, stated that the first quarter results indicated that the bank was on the track towards making significant increment in its returns-on-investment and profit-before-tax in 2012.

The document reads in part: “The bank made significant improvement in core areas of its balance sheet for the period. While profit before tax increased by 316.7 per cent from N1.8 billion in March 2011 to N7.5 billion in March 2012, net interest income increased by 47.2 per cent from N12.3 billion in March 2011 to N18.1 billion in March 2012. The bank also recorded a 51.2 per cent increase in gross earnings from N20.3 billion in March 2011 to N30.7 billion in March 2012.

“We have shown that our industry leading net interest margin is sustainable, and that our operating efficiency is robust and yielding strong operating performance. With our balance sheet clean-up now completed, our cost of risk is returning to acceptable levels allowing for our operating performance to trickle down to the bottom-line and translate into a return to profitability as demonstrated by our significant rise in year on year profit-before-tax at the end of the first quarter”, Otti said.

The bank is currently in negotiations with multilateral agencies to source Tier 2 capital in Q2 and the rest of 2012. Diamond Bank also has a high liquidity ratio of 46.1 per cent (CBN statutory minimum is 30 per cent). “We are delighted by these encouraging results and will continue to maintain focus on growing our operating profitability at acceptable risk levels that ensure we deliver growing returns to our shareholders in 2012 and the years ahead,” concluded Otti.

—Henry Ojelu