FSDH Merchant Bank Rewards Shareholders with N2.6bn Dividend

Eromosele Abiodun

The Board of Directors of FSDH Merchant Bank has recommended the sum of N2.6 billion as dividend payment for the year ended December 31 2015 for its shareholders.

The amount translates to 93.20 kobo per share, 66.45 kobo more than the 26.75 kobo per share it paid at the end of the 2014 financial year.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of FSDH Merchant Bank, Rilwan Belo-Osagie, who disclosed this at the bank’s pre-AGM press briefing said all the banks subsidiaries performed well during the year under review.

As a result, he said profit after tax attributable to the group increased by 34.98 per cent to N4.09 billion from N3.03 billion for the previous year.
Analysis of the results showed that the group achieved a profit before tax (PBT) of N4.72 billion for the financial year ended December 31 2015. This represents an increase of 29.67 per cent over the profit of N3.64 billion for the year ended December 31 2014.

In the financial year under review, the FSDH Group had a total asset size of N116.23billion while the size of the group’s shareholders’ funds stood at N30.24 billion as at December 31, 2015; a 19.06 per cent increase from the position of N25.4 billion for the financial year ended 31 December,2014.
Earnings per share (EPS) for the group stood at 141 kobo, which is 37 kobo more than the 104 kobo that was earned in the previous financial year.

Analysis of contributions from the bank’s subsidiaries showed that FSDH Asset Management (FSDH-AM) contributed a Profit after Tax of N307.93 million, while Pensions Alliance Limited (PAL) and FSDH Securities (FSDH-SEC), added N960.01million and N63.27 million respectively to the Profit After Tax of the group.

Speaking further, he said: “The new year 2016 marks the fourth year of our operations as a Merchant Bank. In spite of the challenges in the economy and in the financial markets, we intend to continue to harness the opportunities we identify in carefully selected industries while continuing with our conservative approach of building a portfolio of risk assets that will be enduring.

We will continue to maximise shareholder value by constantly realigning our operations and also harnessing business opportunities as they arise.”